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WORK

Play Harder, 2021
Another Myth of
Eternal Sameness, 2018
In the Face of Loss, 2020
      

PLAY HARDER

is all about play.


Within my graduation collection I researched play as a critical perspective on contemporary fashion and artistic practice. And thus questioned the strained relation between work and play in modern western society.

I implemented my findings into practice within a process that was characterised by playful interventions. Understanding fashion as a playful situated practise brings it back to the essence of what it could be:



relation with each other, relation to our surroundings and a strategy to reappropriate our environments.

This offers a strategy against distance in production and against usability and productivity claims, so overtly present in our times.




We played.

In this playful process a series of ornamental objects were created


- very unpractical and useles
but extremely functional for playful interaction. - 


With these objects we can create and recreate our communal expression in play over and over again. The photographs at hand show three different stories of how different communal expression can arise in play.

The development of this playful process as a critical tool against production and process that is given shape solely according to economic standarts resultet in a project that makes one plea very obvious: 


Dear Craftswo:men and Designers,
Der Fashionlovers and People who dress:
Let’s try to play harder!

Editorial_1

is all about play.

Photography: Angelina Vernetti
Make-Up: Titia Grefe
Model: Mia Raz, Frederik Britzlmair

Another Story 


This story is based on Johanna Braun’s perception of the objects created in the „Play Harder“ Graduation collection. This story tells one of the stories we can create with the „Play Harder“ garments.

A sensitive, tender and very strong story, captured in all its strength through the lense of Lexi Sun. This story is one of many stories we can tell.


In play we can create
and re-create.


The anonymous place of a functional home was transformed by a playful interaction with each other, the garments and the space. In play my anonymous home has become our playground and thus transformed into a protected space. Not afraid. Personal. In this intimate setting, the garments do not appear as loaded-with-ideology- items for external display. They become sensitive, personal attributes.



Photography: Lexi Sun, Styling: Johanna Braun and Katharina Spitz, Make-Up: Una Ryu,
Design/Crafting: Katharina Spitz
Model: Jee Hye Lee @izaio.modelmanagement, @izaiodevelopment 

The Playmoment 




Photography: Angelina Vernetti
Performers: Mia Raz, Frederik Britzlmair, Naja Stellmach, Phillip Kind, Laura Talkenberg, Elizaveta Efimova

In the Face of Loss



“In the Face of Loss”, 2019, was triggered by the story of a tablecloth that found its way into my hands.
It started with the encounter of a crafting woman [me] and an object [1950s hand-embroidered army-navy tablecloth]. It includes research, sculptural garments, text and photography by Bram Petraeus. 


The tablecloth told a story about mortality, womanhood and crafting, that from a feminist perspective counters a more common story in which female makers' traditions and flower-symbolism are reduced to biological reproduction.

The cloth contains paradoxes between technology and symbolism, that made me aware of the potential for cultural reproduction through making.

Crafting is a ritual act aiming at something permanent in a world threatened by decay and death. The floral symbolism makes this paradox tangible. The woman as a sister is the material agent of cultural reproduction. She enables relation to space and time through her crafting and the objects she makes. 


Crafting transforms the makers presence into an object, that becomes a repository of the makers presence. Such objects are contagious and spread their power and aura to things and people around it.

Possession creates difference, so does female crafting. The acknowledgement of female power through crafting proofs the ritual making as an empowering act. She is preserving and conserving what is inevitably dying.

The emancipated crocheted flower-patterns are fraying, decaying and waxed against this constant threat.

The knitted/clayed objects are embodying fragility and permanence. The composition of artworks show the paradoxes raised by the tablecloth's story and portrait the woman as a sister who is creating objects of permanence in a world threatened by death and decay.
The tablecloths story calls for a feminist movement in the arts and crafts. With its focus on aesthetic, sensual perception. About value and time, value through time
and power through crafting.






Another Myth of
Eternal Sameness


If eternal sameness doesn't guarantee eternal closeness, than what hope could there possibly be for siblings, parents or lovers?







The research of twin-narratives shows: they are trying to construct a myth. A myth of eternal sameness, which I state is a cultural snag because it is a contradiction to the way we, in contemporary western society, experience and think about selfhood. Corporate uniform is aiming to create the same kind of false myth, tries to create another myth of eternal sameness.







Photography: Angelina Vernetti
Make-Up: Jasmin Erb
Model: Mia Raz, Sarah Sekles, Rayssa M. Regis