Laudatio

Laudatio

Laudatio

on the occasion of the awarding of the 2nd Innovation Prize to STREETWARE saved item
By Stefanie Duncker on October 20,, 22 at the Kulturzentrum Pumpe, Berlin

 

LUMPENSAMMLEREI, WASCHSALON, TEXTILE FORENSIK, HAUPTWÄSCHE, FILIALEN, PROGRAMME, STÄRKESTOP

Anyone who has visited the website of the project 'STREETWARE - saved item' will get an idea of how many fibres and connections, strands of searching and storytelling this project consists of.

The starting point of the project are discarded clothes on the streets of Berlin. STREETWARE, directed by barbara caveng, understands the found objects as branches for textiles and equally for stories of local and global entanglement. Saved item - the rescued piece of fashion and clothing in this project stands for abundance and deprivation at the same time; but it also stands for quasi unread stories connected to these textiles. Which of the modern rags will be included in a new collection is therefore decided by the collectors: Is there something interesting in it or not? In their own shop, the garments are processed, made into a brand with logo patches, commercial bluff that is given away and sustainable use all in one. But this is only one part of the extremely comprehensive overall project: In the middle of Corona time, a 24-hour performance starts on a huge garment dump behind glass, branches of shops are also created in the district library, the collection is presented highly professionally with many amateurs on Tempelhofer Feld as a cat walk, numerous laundry stands on wheels form a kind of laundry sculpture in the park, homeless people advise the actors as they walk through 'the big flat' of the city, and Ugandan designers* and start-ups join in the discussion at a conference on culture and politics in the context of sustainability.

The makers of STREETWARE seem to follow every thread they find and develop their own action from it within the project. People from all contexts and from very different professions contribute with their knowledge of the cycles of textiles and with their ability to shape the STREETWARE collection as fashion, but also as a way of thinking. It is about resources of knowledge, material and visionary phantasy to think things further and make them visible.

The project is unique in its diversity. It is outstanding in terms of translating social, cultural and economic contexts into an artistic expression. STREETWARE - Saved item proves how branched and how connected society and unknown stories about clothing and textiles are. Artistically translated and with the participation of very different people, it exposes the use of resources using the example of clothing. It does so in a fun and integrative way that is also highly political.

Kunstasyl under the team leadership of barbara caveng has followed the ever-changing questions within the project without regard for its own resources. This is a dilemma in cultural work: one cannot avoid the questions that always arise anew and differently in the project. Kunstasyl does not evade, that is particularly impressive. We hope there is strength again or still for future projects.

We would like to support that a little.

The jury awards the second "Innovation Prize Socioculture" on the theme of sustainability with great fascination to the project "STREETWARE - Saved item" by the

Kunstasyl e.V. - with its Team leadership barbara caveng.

Stefanie Duncker is a board member of the Fonds SozioKultur and director of the Muggenhof Cultural Office of the City of Nuremberg, , responsible for general programme work and projects.
Wir verwandeln Fetzen in Kultur! Performance im Marta Herford

the turn rags into culture! Performance at Marta Herford

the turn rags into culture! Performance at Marta Herford

A sign against war- Alice Fassina | Annelie Wörpel | Céline Iffli-Naumann & KDindie  ©Paolo Gallo |26.09.2022 Marta Herford
'Awarded Ideas' STREETWARE saved item was awarded the special prize at the 2022 Recycling Design Award for its Berlin-famous MHLD - Multifunctional Hybrid Laundro Drive. The annual prize is organized by the Recycling Boerse Herford. The juried exhibition 'Excellent Ideas', curated this year by Oliver Schübbe, took place at Museum Marta Herford.
On September 24, Alice Fassina, KDindie, Céline Iffli Naumann, and Annelie Wörpel transformed Berlin rags into culture at the Lange Kultur Nacht and entered into dialogue with the artworks of the museum collection.
They transform rags into culture: Alice Fassina | Annelie Wörpel | Céline Iffli-Naumann | KDindie | ©Paolo Gallo 
The public was invited to be inspired by the spirit of the saved items up close. 
A few days later, a museum visitor described to us how she experiences the comfort and the efficacy of our circle fashion:.
'I was at the performance at Marta Herford and wanted to write to you that I found your presence and project very impressive! I also discovered and purchased two garments from you and now proudly wear your logo on my new blazer. Your performance has had an after effect on me, as I consider this garment a piece of your performance and thus carry my experience (i.e., the experience I had with you that evening) with me. I also wondered: who might have worn this garment in the past? And has it been lost? Has it disappeared? Or was it intentionally thrown away? Is it perhaps a piece of evidence? And is there perhaps a bad event behind this garment?

Then it struck me that these questions should arise in the same way when you look at clothes in the stores. There it is even more likely that there is a criminal atrocity and suffering behind the clothes' production.

Who are the human beings who made these clothes?"

Wir freuen uns über die Gedanken von Annemarie und laden alle euch alle ein

WALK WITH US – degendre, decolonize, ecologize your style!

BOTTON DOWN, SALUTE SISTERHOOD!

BOTTON DOWN, SALUTE SISTERHOOD!

BOTTON DOWN, SALUTE SISTERHOOD!

 

What a hot New Year's Eve it must have been, when the the lovers stripped off their clothes: Botton down! Salute sisterhood! Even in the gutter of Berlin's Leykestraße, a pair of pink panties with the feminist statement above the buttocks: 'Periods are cool' clings to the starched chest of a tuxedo shirt from the Ibbenbüren menswear factory Jassö Atelier. Whether the gallant in the smoking shirt got the cuffs when he read in the light of the street lamp the female avowal to bleeding: 'Periods are cool . And messy. And painful. And great.'

May the fashionably unequal couple desire and love each other - May the slogan on the panties be more than a phrase of the label Monki, rebellious daughter of H&M, which advertises with 'gender equality and sustainable consumption and production' .

Love is in the gutter - So the year 22 begins politically romantic and if Annett Louison had not already given herself musically to the gutter in 2019, we would reach her at the latest there with the words:

I celebrate the feast before I fall
I celebrate the feast before I fall
We are the dream couple from the gutter
And tonight you take me as your wife
We're somehow unbeatable
and only tomorrow
will be grey oh, oh
Oh oh
will be grey oh, oh
when we are grey oh, oh
listen to the song ....

Feldarbeit

Field Work

Aïcha Abbadi

CW 36 + 37

Field Work

 

In close proximity and yet in an entirely different world, an offsite fashion show is in the making on Tempelhof Field while an art and fashion fair is taking place inside the former airport.
Taking place within the city’s fashion week time frame, STREETWARE’S open air catwalk nonetheless operates within another temporal reality. Its clotheshorses on wheels are scattered in between families on picnic blankets gathered for a kite festivity, models walking undeterred through the paths of rollerbladers and skaters. Voices are muffled by the wind as different sources of music are transported in waves across the field. A van with three police officers stands by and quietly observes. The models are made up of performers, students and local neighbours. They are gettng changed, wearing outfits styled for them but in which they also had a say. The youngest, Marianna, is only one year old. Her mother, Sara, is also excited about her own first time modelling, although she notes that if she would continue doing it, she would have to buy herself a mirror, as she does not own one. Some finishing touches of hair and make-up are being added and the choreography rehearsed. Friends brought as support are waiting in anticipation, the first passersby curiously stopping in their tracks.

They demonstrated for fashion standards of a fairer future and as a contribution to the debate on body image and aesthetics:  Manuela Coelho | Marlene Sommer | NavaNaimaPan | Nazanin Shamloo  | Nomadin der Lüfte |Pauli | Philairone | Purvi Dhrangaderiya | Sara Tivane | Sarah Nevada Grether | Sophie Stolle | Zohara © Anja Grabert and Paolo Gallo

Learning about the concept behind the show, made up entirely by STREETWARE items, conversations about their own clothes unfold within the public. A group of friends and siblings, following sustainable stylist Mo Latif’s invitation, discusses the special bond created by garments shared with one another and passed on to someone close.

“I don’t know why but it actually makes me happier gettng it this way than buying it new.”

“Also because you have a connection with the person.”

“A deep connection, deep connection – she’s wearing a part of me, bringing a little part of me every day.”

In conversation with front-row guests .

Even though most of the show’s guest at first describe themselves as not very knowledgeable about fashion, it turns out that among them are former models, fashion designers, stylists, costume makers and sewing enthusiasts. Many are wearing garments which they have sewn or altered from second-hand pieces themselves, although one confesses to a passion to online shopping and trying out new styles found on online blogs. For those having moved to Berlin from abroad, the city has created a shiS in mindset, described as having a more conscious approach to fashion, with swaps and second-hand pieces part of the experience of living here.

One skater, at first irritated by the models in her way, becomes enthusiastic as she learns more about the background. It turns out she used to be a fashion designer but stopped working in the industry many years earlier due to its lack of fair practices. Not far away from her, another designer, VICENTE relates that it was at around the time she stopped that he really started. All the pieces he makes are one-of-a-kind, from up-cycled materials, which he has done so from the beginning.

 Manuela Coelho presenting, poltical haute couture‘ by Ruth Faith Nalule | Geneviève © Anja Grabert  

Manuela, modelling “the dress” from Uganda, relates a special connection to the garment which she describes as carrying the baggage of history and containing a piece of all corners of the world. Coming from Mozambique and having seen the consequences of textile waste firsthand, wearing the dress means more to her than just presenting it: she wishes to create awareness about the social and ecological consequences of fashion, as well as set an example for her children. Since growing up in wartime Mozambique, she has always been tending to garments, tailoring and repairing them to make them last longer, passing along those values in the family. Her daughter also walks in the show and as Manuela passes on the dress to her, it becomes a symbolic statement of passing on the future to the next generation.

Laura Marie Gruch | Manuela Coelho | Geneviève  presenting, poltical haute couture‘ by Ruth Faith Nalule © Anja Grabert  

As the catwalk show comes to its finale in a tableau with everyone involved, it generates even more attention. Those distracted up to that point with their own recreational activities, quickly note down further information as they learn the shown pieces are made available for rental the week after. The VESTITHEK, located in Neukölln’s Helene-NathanLibrary, on one of the top floors of a shopping arcade and well integrated between shelves filled with books and music albums, follows in the tradition of clothes lending libraries which have emerged in various locations. Among the first professionally run ones in Europe was Lånegarderoben, which opened in Stockholm in 2010. While most of them operate in individual shop spaces or community centres, the VESTITHEK’s integration into the municipal library opens up the concept to new publics. Appearing as if it had always been there, it merges old and new habits, starting a discussion by merely being present.

Die Große Wäsche

The Big Wash

The Big Wash

The BiG Wash - installation, performance, interventiuon at Waschsalon 115, Torstraße, Berlin-Mitte

'I don’t like washing but my job for now requires that I wash for my boss and her family. The children play outside, and the clothes get dirty. Sometimes, I hide what I find difficult to wash so that I don’t have to wash them.
I need this job so I must pretend that I like it and it’s the only way I get money to take care of my daughter and my family.' Juliet Laker, house help/maid

STREETWARE X MIVUMBA – barbara caveng, Beatrice Lamwaka | Eria Mutalwa | Jim Joël Nyakaana | Josephine Nakiyimba – SSuubi Design | KisituAloysius | Rose Katusabe | Ruth Faith Nalule
Concept and realisation at Waschsalon 115 - STREETWARE saved item – Alice Fassina, barbara caveng, Lotti Seebeck, Stephan C.Kolb
Special thanks to Tobias Breithaupt, managing director of Waschsalon 115 in Berlin - Mitte

A woman scrubs the 'big laundry' with a brush, maltreats the hems that limit her life. The traces are erased - the stains shine blindly. From 15 to 30 November 2021, a white sheet in the window of laundromat 115 on Berlin's Torstraße became a projection screen for videos in which women's hands rubbed textiles, providing an example of an economy of washing that is predominantly female but does not appear in any gross national product. Passers-by who walked across the threshold of Berlin's most famous laundromat on Rosenthaler Platz were confronted with images hurling at them from the drums of the machines: In colourful basins, hands wringed and trafficked the textile accumulation of their household. From pants to laundry, no intimacy was hidden from them, no trace of bodily divestment spared.

"Laundry, washing welfare" - The role of women is enmeshed in the history of washing ; colonial continuities are played out in the global divide between eco-wash and water bucket.

During an artist residency in Uganda in summer 21, barbara caveng let herself be guided by the laundry spread out on meadows and over hedges. Together with the author Beatrice Lamwaka, the fashion designer Ruth Faith Nalule, the photographer Jim Joël Nyakaana and the social entrepreneur Kisitu Aloysius Musanyusa, laundry became their material for an artistic research and exploration about economy, ecology, feminisms and coloniality.

I have to do it - it is my routine

by Rose Katusabe | The Big Wash

'I always have a house help to wash but sometimes I must do it on my own. I don’t like but I must do. I have my clothes and my two daughters to wash. Every time, I am washing, I am thinking about money and how to get it.' Giovanna Lamunu, Lawyer

'I wash twice a week since the baby is always in pampers. I have a positive attitude towards washing but the problem finding time to wash because it takes so much time. There is a day when I kept my baby’s clothes not washed for two days and the stains refused to get off, because she had started drinking and eating, I think these ones need to be soaked with a strong detergent like for two days.

And I like clothes with a good smell after drying, so I prefer sunlight washing powder and put sosoft to soften her clothes and have a nice smell. If you are a stay home mother, I think washing every day is better or after one day; soak one day and wash the next day, and also, I must say that it's expensive to buy soap and other detergents.' Fortunate Tusasirye, new mother and Programme Assistant, FEMRITE

'I am responsible for my hygiene and health, so I must wash. I was for my partner as well. Sometimes, I wish he could assist me, and we wash together, and I also wish he could wear his clothes for a little longer, so I don’t have so many clothes to wash.' Giovanna Lamunu, Lawyer

to the left: Beatrice Lamwaka embroidering quotes from conversations about washing on bedsheets & to the right: 'female economy' barbara caveng © Lotti Seebeck

In cooperation with Beatrice Lamwaka, a series of interviews on the subject of washing was created. These explored together with the laundresses the physical and psychological effects of manual textile care without electricity and water as available commodities and explored the impact on the individual biographies, self-realisation and professional lives. Excerpts from the conversations were audible in one of the salon's clothes dryers: 'while doing laundry', one of the women interviewed said, she also thought about how her family could survive at all. 'I have to do it' - Rose Katusabe's voice rang out in the drum. 'It is my routine.'
Under the titel How to measure a man through handwashing an essay by Beatrice Lamwaka is published on our website. 

Is the washing machine the great liberator of women?

We explored this question in series of events at the salon with laundry maestro Stefan Targatz, director of the Laundry Museum Eberswalde, we embroidered with students of the master program Art in Context of the UDK while Beatrice Lamkwaka told about the daily routine of washing by women’s hand in Uganda and fashion designer Ruth Faith Nalule sang a song of praise to love as the driving energy for any human action. Meanwhile, visitors to the laundromat unloaded their items from suitcases and bags into the washing drums and chose the appropriate program to wash their dirty laundry clean.

As a highlight we presented the industrial film ‚Wäsche - Waschen- Wohlergehen‘ (Laundry - Washing - Wellbeing), which was produced by Universum Film on behalf of the Henkel Group in 1931 and premiered in 32, a tribute and testimony in moving images to the belief in progress according to the social rules of a patriarchal society.

On the photographs: Alice Fassina | barbara caveng | Ruth Faith Nalule | Beatrice Lamwaka | Jim Joel Nyakaana | Kisitu Aloysius Musanyusa | Sidney Noemi Stein | Stefan Targatz | ©Lotti Seebeck 

ps: Returning to Uganda, Ruth Faith Nalule sought out a laundromat - they exist in Kampala too, but their use is reserved for the few. During a telephone conversation on december 17 she demanded 'the right for all to use a washing machine - Our country must develop towards this before we die over the basin.'

'The Congress on the Clothes Dump' described a series of events between September and November 2021 dedicated to an inclusive and participatory philosophizing about the meaning of clothes, their production, distribution and consumption. Invited guests and random attendees digged into textonic layers, searched for solutions, questioned the ethics of the second skin. Clothing protects and adorns. It represents basic aesthetic and existential needs, but its mode of production destroys the environment on a large scale and endangers the physical and psychological well-being of the people who cope with the manufacturing processes in socially intolerable conditions. How could sustainable production and economy look like - this is what we explored between November 16 and 28 together with author Beatrice Lamwaka, fashion designer Ruth Faith Nalule, photographer Jim Joel Nyakaana and Social Entrepreneur and environmental activist Kisitu Aloysius Musanyusa in a multi-perspective way. Venues for the public pondering were Bikini Berlin, the laundromat 115 in Torstraße and the Vestithek in the Helene Nathan Library.

EN