FAST FASHION SLOW ART August 8 – December 15, 2019
Fast Fashion / Slow Art
Sustainability, in terms of both labor and the environment, has become a pressing issue with regard to fashion. This is especially true when we consider “fast fashion”: inexpensive, trendy clothing produced for a mass market. This exhibition aims to provoke conversations about the global production and distribution of clothing and textiles. The films and videos by the artists in Fast Fashion / Slow Art raise questions such as these: Is it possible to protect workers’ rights and ensure safe working conditions while keeping up with consumer demands? How does technology affect the experience and conditions of labor? What skills does the mass production of textiles require? What are the merits of local and handmade garments? Can design and technology offer sustainable solutions to the environmental effects of fast fashion? What role do art and popular culture have in raising consumer consciousness?
Economists and labor activists have debated the consequences of textile production since the start of the Industrial Revolution. In the 21st century, the scale of production and waste, the environmental impact of the global movement of raw and manufactured goods, and the introduction of new technologies have generated a crisis qualitatively different from that which spurred Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto. While the works of these artists cannot solve the intractable problems plaguing the textile industry, they can be sites to address these concerns creatively and ask viewers to slow down and consider the people and issues involved in the actual fabrics of our lives. Bibiana Obler and Phyllis Rosenzweig, Guest Curators
Carole Frances Lung, Frau Fiber vs. the Circular Knitting Machine, 2015, digital video, black-and-white, sound, 4 hours, 32 minutes. Courtesy of ILGWU archive.
Below: Cat Mazza, Electroknit grid pattern (study for Electroknit Dymaxion), 2018, gouache on digital print, 13 × 19 in. Image courtesy of the artist.
CAROLE FRANCES LUNG
Frau Fiber vs. the Circular Knitting Machine (2015) is the first in a series of films by Carole Frances Lung in which her avatar, Frau Fiber, competes by hand against means of industrial production. At the end of this real-time four-hour video, Frau Fiber completes one hand-knitted sock compared to the machine’s pile of 99. Lung is an activist whose studio and headquarters, the Institute 4 Labor Generosity Workers & Uniforms, pays homage to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Her deadpan humor begs the question of whether it is possible to return from mass production to the artisanal and handmade. ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
In Rosemarie Trockel’s video, Yvonne (1997), friends of all ages cavort in eccentric hand-knitted creations. Prior to filming Yvonne, Trockel exhibited a series of works in which logos and other impersonal motifs were converted by computer into patterns for machines to knit. Intended in part to question the privileged status of painting, and taken together with the unique adornments seen in Yvonne, these works probe the relation between handmaking and late capitalist technologies.
CAT MAZZA
Cat Mazza works with textiles, often with an activist agenda, and scrutinizes the intersection between technology and textile production. Electroknit Dymaxion (2019) combines designs drawn from multiple sources around the world. An open-source computer program converts the designs into digitally generated knitting patterns. Mazza reflects on the global commonality of her sources and through open-sourcing feeds back into handmaking.
Detail (altered) from still from Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt, 2013, interactive website. © 2013 National Public Radio, Inc. Photo credit: David Gilkey/NPR.
Julia Brown, Live feed; printer-error identification station and operator at an Italian luxury-silk textile factory; Or, before “Leaving The Factory,” the meditative disposition’s instinct for privacy, 2010 HD color video, sound, 2:49 minute loop. Courtesy of the artist.
MARTHA ROSLER
JULIA BROWN
Martha Rosler’s video, Martha Rosler Reads
Julia Brown’s Live feed: printer-error
“Vogue” (1982), the earliest work in the show, satirizes the dictatorial influence of high fashion and exposes the conditions of sweatshop labor that make such luxury
identification station and operator at an Italian luxury-silk textile factory; Or, before “Leaving the Factory,” the meditative disposition’s instinct for privacy (2010)
possible. Her video introduces one of
invites viewers to look over the shoulder
the show’s recurrent themes, the divide
of a uniformed factory worker as she
between consumer privilege and the adverse
searches for machine-printing errors in a
conditions of sweatshop labor, and calls
luxury silk textile pattern. Hers is one of
for viewers to realize their complicity in the
the few remaining human interventions in
system. Her tactics of montage and her
a formerly artisanal process. The viewer
investigation of the documentary medium,
experiences her labor in an unending
moreover, reappear in work by other artists
loop as Brown foregrounds both beauty
in the exhibition.
and drudgery.
HITO STEYERL
SENGA NENGUDI
Hito Steyerl, for example, also layers
In The Threader (2007), Senga Nengudi
information from multiple sources in her
also examines the place of skilled human
parafictional and autobiographical
work in the face of increasingly mecha-
Lovely Andrea (2007). Amid an avalanche
nized textile production. Her subject is one
of disparate images, she briefly intercuts
of the last highly skilled textile workers
a film clip of dancing female garment
employed in a New York City factory that
workers with shots of a professional bondage
had moved its base of operations to North
performer, offering a feminist critique
Carolina to take advantage of cheaper
of propaganda and sex film industries, and
manufacturing and labor costs. While the
providing a broad-ranging interrogation
film alludes to the duress of shifting labor
of freedom, exploitation and self-expression.
markets, Nengudi’s focus is on the beauty of the precise movements of skilled labor and how it can be seen as an art form akin to dance.
Wang Bing, 15 Hours, 2017, 16:9 film, color, sound — in two parts (7 hours, 55 minutes each), Edition of 6 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris.
WANG BING
Wang Bing is a filmmaker who is refashioning cinema verité for the 21st century. 15 Hours (2017) records a day in a garment-processing facility in Huzhou, China—the length of the film determined by the length of the work day. Wang’s films rely on vast footage made possible by digital technology and are notable for how intimately they convey the effects of China’s rapid economic growth on people’s everyday lives. MARTIN DE THURAH
PLANET MONEY MAKES A T-SHIRT / SWEATSHOP—DEADLY FASHION
Two final projects in this exhibition, aimed at a more popular audience, replace metaphor and indirection with instruction. Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt, an interactive website produced by National Public Radio’s Planet Money, documents the making of a T-shirt: growing cotton in Texas; sewing in Bangladesh and Colombia; and transporting the shirts back to NPR’s listeners. In Sweatshop— Deadly Fashion, produced by Norway’s largest newspaper, three young fashion bloggers travel to Cambodia where the
In Martin de Thurah’s short film, Stories
experience of working conditions
(2017), a girl walks through Berlin peeling
there turns two of them into activists.
white t-shirts off her body, discarding them with insouciance. Although dreamlike and obviously fictional, Stories speaks to the invisibility of the costs in human labor of producing fast fashion.
Program Highlights
All programs are free unless otherwise noted. For a complete list of programs with descriptions, or to register for a program, visit museum.gwu.edu/programs or call 202-994-7394. CURATOR TOURS
Fast Fashion/Slow Art Friday, August 23, 12 noon Friday, September 20, 12 noon Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (500 17th Street, NW) Bibiana Obler and Phyllis Rosenzweig, Fast Fashion co-curators Free, but reservations are required STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
Art, Sustainability, and Activism Friday, September 13, 12 noon Thursday, October 17, 12 noon Thursday, November 7, 12 noon Thursday, December 5, 12 noon Salon Doré, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (500 17th Street, NW) Free, but reservations are required WORKSHOP
Motifs, Migrations, and Misappropriations Thursday, September 26, 3 – 6 PM The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum (701 21st Street, NW) Frau Fiber, Fast Fashion artist All are welcome to stop by to meet the artist; reservations are required for the workshop.
Visitor Information
CONFERENCE
Unveiling Fashion: Textiles and the New Circular Economy Saturday, September 28, 9 AM – 5 PM Hammer Auditorium, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (500 17th Street, NW) Fee: $55/museum members, $75/public, $5 GW students A collaboration with the D.C. Sustainable Fashion Collective and the GW Office of Sustainability FILM SERIES
The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum (701 21st Street, NW) The Man in the White Suit Thursday, September 19, 5 PM (85 minutes) Directed by Alexander Mackendrick Introduced by Bibiana Obler, Fast Fashion co-curator Maquilapolis Thursday, October 10, 5 PM (68 minutes) Directed by Sergio de la Torre and Vicky Funari Introduced by Phyllis Rosenzweig, Fast Fashion co-curator RiverBlue Thursday, November 14, 5 PM (95 minutes) Directed by David McIlvride and Roger Williams Introduced by Tom Goehner, curator of education
Fast Fashion/Slow Art is organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, in cooperation with the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University and the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. The exhibition in Washington is made possible, in part, by generous support from Stefanie Zeldin and Robert K. Sigal and the Zeldin Family Foundation, the George Washington University Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Facilitating Fund, the George Washington University Columbian College Facilitating Fund, and the Center for Craft, Asheville, North Carolina.
Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, 500 17th Street NW Tuesday – Sunday, 1 – 5 PM On view August 8 – December 15, 2019
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine January 30 – August 2, 2020
Front cover: (top) Still from Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt, 2013, interactive website © 2013 National Public Radio, Inc. Photo credit: David Gilkey/NPR; (bottom) Still from Rosemarie Trockel, Yvonne, 1997, video, black-and-white and color, sound, 14 minutes. Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig. © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; courtesy of GfZK Leipzig.