NEWS / EVENTS
06/2023 > Lost and Collected featured in Vestoj: On Everyday Life
(Edited by Anja Aronowsky Cronberg)
18/06/2023 > HAVE/NEED Forum: A zone for critical discussion about the environment of fashion with Emanuele Coccia, Gabriel Figueiredo, Ruby Hoette, Hubert Crabières, Alexis Etienne, Flora Bouteille and Ethics Angels Company, River Yarra. Organised by Léa Domingues & Aapo Nikkanen, Paris, FR
31/10/2022 - 20/01/2023 > MODUS Hosts @ Fashion Space Gallery, London UK
26/08/22 - 28/08/22 > Group Exhibition – Correctionville #2.
Curated by Institute of Cartopology, Hoogcruts, NL
23/06/2022 - 26/06/2022 > Group Exhibition – JVE Open Studios, Maastricht, NL
12/04/2022 - 31/05/2022 > Group Exhibition – Domestic Monsters, Constance Howard Gallery, London, UK
01/11/2021 - 01/10/2022 > Designer in Residence – Jan van Eyck Academie: Post–Academy for Art, Design and Reflection, Maastricht, NL
My current research (working title: A Field Guide to Lines and Clothes) takes DIY garment patterns and mapping as points of departure to explore physical, geographical and political orientations in relation to the global infrastructures of fashion production and consumption. The research builds on a set of abstract 'navigational devices' developed during a residency at Jan van Eyck Academy in 2022 and aims to create a dialogue between the fashion industry (objects/clothing, materials/processes and infrastructures) and wider social, cultural, economic and political contexts and networks. Oscillating between scales, it explores the tensions and relationships between individual bodies and the shared geographies we move in and through.
Garment patterns as cartographies and textile objects such as moving blankets made from reconstituted clothing, give form to processes and materials that represent relationships between bodies, movement and commodities. The technical process of translating the three-dimensional interface of clothing into flattened lines is positioned in dialogue with the mapping of contexts and scales of the garment industry (for example shipping distribution routes) interconnecting multiple temporalities, economies and cultural interactions. Performance: 'Notes on Lines and Finding Ways' (April, 2022) JVE Open Studios (June, 2022)MODUS is an international network of practitioners and bridging theory and practice in fashion. The central thread is a glossary of verbs or ‘modes of practice’ serving as a starting point for all MODUS initiatives including the MODUS publication (2018) as well as various events and exhibitions during Dutch Design Week (MODUS in residence 2018, MODUS: Annotated 2019, MODUS: Conversations 2020, MODUS Hosts: Unfolding Inter-local Practice 2021 and MODUS Hosts @ Fashion Space Gallery 2022/23.
The MODUS online network invites practitioners to link their work to verbs from the glossary. As it grows the network connects and supports the community of practice that is collectively pushing the boundaries of the field and exploring how it is woven into broader social, cultural, political and economic flows of value and meaning. By gathering these critical and experimental approaches to fashion production and presentation, MODUS supports diverse modes of operating as belonging to fashion, reclaiming the word and connecting the people that are redefining it. The platform facilitates conversations between the practitioners working in this expanded field and writers/theorists from a range of disciplines from cultural and critical theory to politics and economics to formulate alternate systems of value and nurture expanded ways of thinking, doing and being fashion. MODUS is led by Ruby Hoette and Caroline Stevenson in collaboration with Roland Brauchli and Floriane Misslin as research assistant.What if fashion were a discussion, an exchange, a negotiation or even a heart to heart? And what if conversation were a mode of production? Are there new perspectives this might this reveal in terms of materials, processes and value?
Conversation Pieces is an on-going research project that investigates the potential of garments as discursive objects and dress practices as dialogues. The project employs tools and techniques that are related to both text (highlighting) and textile (unpicking) to generate perspectives on fashion practice that are embedded in everyday dress practices and associated language.For the publication and ongoing project Dictionary Dressings: Re-reading clothing definitions towards alternative fashion perspectives (2016) by Femke de Vries, Conversation Pieces #1 explores the relationship between the sleeve and the scarf using their definitions, functions and everyday adaptations as mechanisms to reinterpret. Subsequent editions of the project have been presented at Everyone and Everything as Material Conference hosted by The Swedish School of Textiles and RMIT, Borås, Sweden (2017), ArtEZ Fashion Colloquium: Searching for the New Luxury, Arnhem, NL (2018), The Community: Living Room, Paris and Tenderbooks, London, UK (2018) and Omega Workshop curated by Rational Dress Society, EFA project Space, NYC (2018).