UBE 5: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
(textility, dysmorphia, human labour, pollution, costume, shopping, ethical calculus, cool, uniform, class, wealth, display, adolescence, sharing, gendered clothing, shoplifting, couture, nostalgia, hierarchy, material, ageing, sustainability, working in retail, cultural appropriation, weight, skin, hair, nails, use-value, the binge, ritual, music videos, jeans, tactility, cosplay, role-playing, movies, cliques, collection, armour, form)
Each issue of Ube is centred around a theme. When we put together an issue, we call for submissions to respond to that theme, resulting in a sprawling spectrum of art and writing with at least one common thread. The themes are chosen from areas that we find ourselves pre-occupied with, representing different facets of our lives. Through the first 4 incarnations Ube, we have found that the theme of one issue will dictate or shape the next. This, I feel, is at its most explicit between issues 4 + 5.
At the end of Ube 4: Eating, unwittingly forming a bridge between that issue and the next, I included a quote from Dodie Bellamyās essay Digging Through Kathy Ackerās Stuff. Alongside a photograph of my friendās hands greasing an oven dish, I cited āIām dipping into a pot of female contagionā. Though arguably relevant to the ideas of consumption, pollution and eating rituals explored in issue 4, Bellamy was definitely talking about clothes.
To ādressā is a concern that we face daily, like eating, and may evoke as broad a response. The act of getting dressed is tied to class, wealth and labour. It is always, always tied to the body. Fashion embodies the terror of being capitalismās favourite export, yet one cannot really opt out of apparel. And as for choosing a theme that preoccupies us, ādressā is another area that oozes into our research from all angles. I might have the Topshop webpage open while Iām writing a residency application form, or I might spend an hour trying to decide which jumper to wear to the library where no one I know will see me anyway. Last year I bought a sewing machine and started trying to make my own clothes, and I spend most of the time furiously trying to reconcile this amateurish pursuit with other, disparate areas of my art practice. I worry about my weight, my hair, my skinā¦
It is only appropriate for Ube 5 to spend some time looking at ādressā. Digging Through Kathy Ackerās Stuff was of course a point of departure for this theme, but I would further this bibliography with Margaux Williamsonās How to Dress in Our New World and Tansy E. Hoskinsās Stitched Up: An Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. These texts allude, in one way or another, to how we might dress in the future. Would fashion as we know it exist in a post-capitalist utopia? Probably not, no, but the alternatives are so intriguing.
germansingergirl
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amandla
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