FAMA

Fashion machine

Mixed Media, Interactive installation, 2017

Conny Groenewegen, Laboratory for Critical Technics, Mediamatic, Officina Corpuscoli

The fashion industry is a beautiful and polluting business. The fast pace of clothing production accounts for overwhelming amounts of material and immaterial consumption, global-labor exploitation and environmental pollution. In collaboration with the Laboratory for Critical Technics at Arizona State University, Mediamatic and Officina Corpuscoli, Conny Groenewegen presents a new edition of Fashion Machine in summer 2017. This interactive installation and laboratory intervenes in the lifecycle of the fast-fashion industry through one of its most characteristic leftovers: the fleece sweater.

This garment is enormously popular among outdoor lovers and has gained recognition as an up-cycled product made from PET bottles. However, the realities fleece’s role in the fast-fashion industry are becoming shockingly apparent. Recent audits have shown that the supply chain of even the most “sustainable” producers of fleece are guilty of global human trafficking and forced labor. The afterlife of fleece is just as troubling. Research shows that fleece garments shed synthetic micro fibers (an average of 1.7 grams per wash) that find their way into the Earth’s waterways and are having a detrimental effect on the health of marine and (now) human ecologies. And now, scientists confirm that 85% of shoreline debris comes from microfibers (Browne et al. 2011). Adding to the problem, fleece that is not consumed or repurposed in the Western world (it does not fare well in the second-hand industry, for instance) finds its way into landfills, incinerators, or it is shipped to the Global South where it is of little use. Fleece’s neglected lifecycle is having a devastating impact on living ecologies.

The researchers are engaged in a multi-stage design research project that gives concrete expression fleece’s lifecycle and speculates about a new afterlife for the garment. The first stage of the project involves collecting an enormous quantity of unwanted fleece and then systematically cutting it into strips to create large balls of yarn. Mediamatic’s Panorama Studio functions as a “sweatshop” that makes fast fashion’s mechanisms of production tangible for the many volunteers and employees working on the project. The balls will then be fed into basic wooden knitting benches to produce monumental knitted flags that will be draped over Mediamatic buildings. The dramatic scale of these garment flags will bring the overproduction of this unsustainable material into sharp focus for both participants and viewers.

The second stage of the project involves collaborating with designers and researchers to reimagine the afterlife of fleece. Conny Groenewegen and the Laboratory for Critical Technics will collaborate with Officina Corpuscoli and the Mediamatic team to culture fungi that can decompose fleece. The project leverages the important work that Officina Corpuscoli has already done with white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium to decompose plastic in order to take concrete steps toward re-envisioning the afterlife of this harmful synthetic garment. In this way, the research team transforms the representational and performative aspects of the first stage of the project into sites for laboratory experimentation on the future of fast fashion. In the end, Fashion Machine gives tangible expression to the lifecycle of fleece—from production to pollution—and then uses of DIYBio in order to speculate about the new potentials for this garment.

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