The advent of the twenty-first century ushered in a new generation of fashiondesigners who merge design, artistic practice and research in a natural way. Theyuse artistic and activist interventions to revision fashion as a cultural and symbolicvalue-adding component integral to post-industrial restructuring and repositioningit as a much broader and more significant role than as an industry that makes andsells apparel (Craik 2019: 133). This generation is not necessarily operating fromfashion capitals such as London or Paris, but quite often based in the outskirts ofthe fashion areas (such as Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden or Austria). Beingaware of the social and environmental issues and the failures of the current fashionsystem, they are fundamentally rethinking and redefining the fashion system byimplementing new values and new imaginations approaching fashion design asan embodied practice and as an activist tool (Bourriaud 2009: 51–52; Teunissen2005: 8–23; Teunissen 2014: 12–72). Based on the research for the exhibitionsThe Future of Fashion in Now (2014) and State of Fashion (2018) – where I showcased these ground-breaking designers – I would like to draw and define this ‘newhybrid designer’ and highlight how they as activists and practitioners effectivelycontribute to some of the fundamental changes of the current fashion system(Teunissen 2018).
Some of the most striking accounts of the inventive power of imagination come from former prisoners who have spent time in solitary confinement. In these testimonies, they relate how their imaginative capacity enabled them to keep their sanity, even in the most arduous circumstances. Somehow they managed to find a way to keep a very basic sense of social and cultural relations intact, by picturing themselves in a richer world than the one afforded by the concrete walls of the cell block. There is the astonishing story of the experience of the brothers Midhat, Bayazid, and Ali Bourequat who spent 18 years in a Moroccan prison. Here they were able to muster the power of imagination in a most dramatic way. The only way to survive their ordeal, according to their own testimonies (Hiddema B: De hel van Marokko: “We hebben Hassan beloofd te zwijgen”. De Groene, 7. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-hel-van-marokko-we-hebben-hassan-beloofd-te-zwijgen, 1994), was by imagining they were somewhere else. In their own 2-by-3-meter cells, the prisoners forgot about the thick walls locking them in and celebrated their birthdays, weddings, even births, and whatnot. Their minds were inexhaustible in creating diversions. One of them was by taking each other for walks in Paris. Gradually all the other inmates, sitting in their other dim-lighted prison cells, “walked” along with them. Thus they shut out reality completely: their world was what they invented. That was their salvation (This account is based on (Hiddema B: De hel van Marokko: “We hebben Hassan beloofd te zwijgen”. De Groene, 7. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-hel-van-marokko-we-hebben-hassan-beloofd-te-zwijgen, 1994, February 16)). It is this radical human ability to imagine worlds wholly other to the one that one is present in, which is foregrounded in the artful workshop that is the theme of this chapter.
Western societies are quickly becoming less coherent (Giddens, 1991). As a result it is increasingly unclear how individuals should act in a range of situations or how they may understand themselves. To a certain extent this development towards more diverse perspectives and a broader range of ways to act is a positive one, as cultures can only develop as they are confronted with different perspectives. A uniform culture would simply reach a standstill. That said, current society now demands of its citizens that they become increasingly self-reliant and by extension develop a capacity to be self-governing. On the labour market self-reliance and self-determination have been considered par for the course even longer. It is no surprise then that terms like self-direction, self-governing teams, employability and resilience are considered part of the standard repertoire of politicians and employers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2017). Within the social sciences, an ability to be self-governing and self-reliant are terms that are associated with the concept “agency”. However, the latter is a fairly vague, multidimensional concept (Arthur, 2014) that refers to the ‘scope of action’ an individual has in a fluid society (Bauman, 2000). In this article we would like to explore the concept of ‘agency’ further whereby we focus on the role of imagination in enacting it. https://doi.org/10.1177/1038416218777832 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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