My Big Idea

Tbf I'm pretty certain that my final 'Big Idea' was heavily influenced by my super-arty-mega-creative flat mates but, it's still an idea.

The big finale results in me essentially pitching this idea to the rest of my seminar group, which is a pretty scary thought as it is. Rewind around a week and we'd been given the task of creating an idea to make a student demographic aware of the issues surrounding sustainable/eco fashion. Something that, if you've read my previous blog, you'd know that I was passionate about.

Now I am not fully sure of what my voice is with this blog yet, or what I'm going to use it for, but to give you some sort of context to this specific entry there's like two things you need to know about me: I'm an art gallery go-er/fanatic (take me on a date there and I'll love you forever) and I'm instagram MAD. I will take a good 200 photos of the same thing in the same exhibition to get that clean-cut, colour-coordinated, visually-pleasing, lines-matching-the-frame image.

I adore this industry, like it's an in-the-now creative platform that never stops, it's always changing, you can defo make it if what you're making is different and exciting, but I'm not going to sit here and sugar coat it. The harsh reality of the matter is the actual effects fashion has on the environment and the ethical issues that come with this.

The wardrobe push. Fast Fashion. Succumbing to trends. It's all part and parcel of it, the main reason why deadlines for garment workers are next to impossible, why they get exploited for cheapness because big companies fuel and then feed our greed, then incidentally it becomes the reason why there are piles of textile shit everywhere. I want an idea that metaphorically speaks this, that shows the cycle from A to B. Something that shows how someone like little old Meg from NTU can actually become consciously aware of what she'd doing to the planet by being 'on trend'.

So after reading several research pieces, articles and blogs mainly, I landed on the idea that best represents me and what I believe would be taking advantage of the fact that all of the creative buildings are in one space. Like there's literally one street in between Waverley, Boots Library, the SU, Barnes Wallis, Bonnington, it's all there! So, the next step was to do something super arty, something that would make people stop, look without realising they were looking, study maybe? try and decipher it like they would a piece of art. The only thing that popped into my head that was remotely close to this was the shadow puppet act from Britain's Got Talent; Attraction. A Hungarian shadow theatre group who made people take notice of how they told a story; telling a story, a narrative being an ideal that is taught on my course, I thought this could become very relevant. But instead of shadows, take inspiration from body paint dancers, who mould together much like shadow performers, but help create picture via the art on their bodies.

So then in terms of marketing I thought of all the exciting ways that people get the public interacting and 'let lose' if you like. FLASH MOBS. Who doesn't love them. I mean yeah it may be sliiiiiiightly over done but who doesn't love a good bit of 'what the hell do they thing they're doing' mixed into their average uni day.

OKAY. Now I have some sort of idea, something that I can work with, I'm thinking to have some sort of object left behind. A wardrobe maybe? simple, kinda obvious if you've actually been reading this blog, but I reckon it'd be effective. You don't usually see a random wardrobe in the Library do you? In there there could be real footage from the True Cost film we watched, of landfills, of disgusting working conditions, of all of our materialistic hunger and greed. The ugly side to fashion.

So to sort of make sense of all the nonsense I've just typed, I want to use performance art, with body painting to portray my idea. These performers will be painted to seem like a pile of clothes, morphe suites to make them faceless? much like the garment workers who aren't recognised for the hell they're put through everyday and the companies who don't have the balls to own up to it. At prime times around the City campus, this pile of clothes will break away as people, who just 'mingle' in every day student activities, drawing attention, making people stare, moving as quick as the trends and as quick as the deadlines of those poor garment workers. Then the wardrobe, the interactive, exhibition installments as it were, left to educate those who want to be educated, not forcing guilt nor sparing them of it.

P.s I'm sorry if you actually read this blog, it was more for me than you xoxo