2023
Critical Fashion Research and Magazine Making with Students:
FASHION FIELD WALKS - A critical magazine workshop
Concept:
In the project Fashion Field Walks – A critical magazine workshop [Fashion Field Walks – Eine kritische Magazin-Werkstatt] we produce an independent artistic fashion publication.
We critically engage with spatial staging, visual language and the social structures as well as the power dynamics of presentation spaces for art and fashion. In communal focus walks we conduct field research in the dense urban area of Mitte, between Auguststraße and Neue Schönhauser Straße, where we explore, document and ask questions to passersby. In a change of perspective, we transform from users and consumers to co-creators and commentators of our surroundings.
As a mobile editorial office, we document our research via drawing, photography and text, which are developed into collages, textile works and further artistic translations at Kurt-Tucholsky-Oberschule and MiK Jugendkunstschule, our magazine workshops. Possible themes include personal experiences, access to culture, the contrast between production and presentation spaces, ambiguous messages and cultural mechanisms. How do media images, language, spaces and stagings of our everyday life influence our self-awareness? Which scope of action do we have to reconfigure power structures and social dynamics?
The collective results form a magazine which also reflects on common formats. Its final form is developed together. It is a contribution to an active fashion culture with space for investigative, poetic, humorous and intuitive works, for a spectrum of approaches that artistically extend the field of fashion.
photos by Sandra Ratkovic
Aïcha Abbadi (studied fashion design, UdK Berlin) and Johanna Schwab (studied visual arts, HfBK Dresden, cultural management, Angewandte Wien) conduct artistic and critical fashion research, explore playful, participatory pratice formats and have experience with the conception and publication of independent online and print publications.
Participating from Kurt-Tucholsky-Oberschule: Laith Al-Dahan, Emilie Baltzer, Cheyanne Bocian, Hadia Diab, Emilia Engelmann, Johanna Gerstenberg, Emilia Hoepner, Leonie-Sophie Kerkow, Karlotta Konschak, Mattis Lindemann, Selina Özcan, Mia-Sophie Pawusch, Catharina Preuß, Jasmin Procher, Johanna Roeder, Lina Seyffarth, Laura Töppel, Lana Katharina Vogelgesang, Lisa Zettl, Carlotta Zetzsche and teacher Nadine Schindler.
The excursions are photographically accompanied by Sandra Ratkovic. In her artistic photography, she explores sociological questions with a focus on societal transformations and the visual living surroundings of people. Past themes incluse the Brexit and places of remembrance of deinsustrialisation in Eastern Europe. During a stipend from Kunstverein Donnersbergkreis she explored equivalents of urban street art in rural space.
The graphic realisation is supported by Gemma Wilson. She is a Dutch multisciplinary designer who works as an editorial and commercial illustrator, graphic designer, graphic recorder and organiser-mediator of cultural activities. Her work often includes geometrical shapes, elements from myths and different printing techniques. She is currently studying as a Meisterschülerin at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig.
Supported by the Berliner Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung.
photos by Aïcha Abbadi and Johanna Schwab
