At the 2009 Indie Media Fair.
—
Rebecca Armstrong in The Brooklyn Rail -
“Wearing Me: A Tale of T-Shirts“ [via The Anti-Advertising Agency]
Selected exerpts -
“I stopped buying sweatshop clothes, and eventually decided to wear only clothes I make myself.
This decision has taught me a number odd and interesting things about clothes and how we think about them.” “The most surprising thing I’ve learned has to do with t-shirts. Of all the garments I have made and worn, from winter coats to blue jeans, bathing suits to party dresses, people remain most impressed with my ability to make a t-shirt.”
“T-shirts are not difficult to make, even for a beginner. They are made of four pieces and trim, usually out of knit cotton or cotton blended with synthetic. Knit cotton is perhaps the most forgiving fabric on the planet. If you have a basic sense of form and a healthy sense of adventure, you can cut freehand. Otherwise, you can use a standard pattern or an old shirt cut apart at the seams, and create variations. One advantage to t-shirt structure is that you can easily guess what effect any change in the pattern will have on the finished garment. If you want a boxier look, you cut the body wider. If you want the sleeves shorter—you get the idea. At this point I can make two-three t-shirts an hour, if I cut them simultaneously and don’t have to change my sewing machine’s thread color. You can make a t-shirt with very little knowledge of the body, of patternmaking, of sewing. It is a forgiving form made of forgiving materials. Many of the people who make t-shirts are doing so in degraded conditions for very little, if any, pay.”
“Here is something particular about t-shirts that makes making them seem impossible, whereas jeans and dresses do not have this special quality.
What I have come up with is this. T-shirts are our base, our basic clothing item. They are also one of the most deeply industrialized garments we wear.” “T-shirts are the garment that most reveals our alienation from craft, from practice. Button-downs used to be made by tailors, and we can imagine them being pieced together thoughtfully to the specific measurements of a specific human, even if ours are made with elasticized fabric and gap at the buttons when we move. Trousers, likewise, have a history of being made before they were manufactured. But t-shirts are purely industrial, a product not only of the mechanization of making but of the informality of the culture born of the American industrial empire.
Making a t-shirt doesn’t seem like the simple cut-and-sew job it is. Industrialization has made us stupid about the object-world we inhabit. We can no longer look at something and guess whether it would be easy or hard to make, whether it requires immense skill or the simplest, barely skilled, steps. We mostly inhabit a world we think of as pre-existent. We see objects in non-human terms. When confronted with a computer, a clock, a shoe, a t-shirt, we can barely remember, even if we work hard at it, that though we didn’t make it—and maybe couldn’t even imagine how to if we tried—somebody did. Someone, somewhere, made what you’re wearing now. Someone being paid to do it (or not paid, depending on how unlucky they happen to be in the grand scheme of globalized capitalism) has touched what you touch, has changed it from raw materials to the object you use, by making.
That this kind of making predominates in our lives means that we measure all other making by it.” “Visible signs of human involvement are perceived as lack of skill, which the maker would avoid if at all possible.”
“This system of valuation asks the maker to be invisible.” “A desire for made objects to deny they are made, to show no traces of the hand or mind engaged in their making, denies the maker’s right to existence and creativity. It negates the individuality that manifests in the made object. It asks us to erase ourselves.”
“Grassroots movements against capitalism often have an aesthetic of the made. Not choosing from the proffered options means we want more, we are willing to build it ourselves.” “I hope we will … examine and re-evaluate our relationships with the made things in our lives. Perhaps, disappointed by the options being offered, more of us will make things for ourselves. Making things is a way to show our humanity, break the surface of our image, and reveal ourselves to one another. It is how we show our hand.”
—
Some would say that Ms. Armstrong’s piece is about “reification” and (commodity) “fetishism” –
if not associated “alienation.”
Those concepts all are important — in my opinion. Yet, I also think that we should be able to discuss ideas without necessarily using jargon, or obscure literature; I also think that analytical depth (e.g. subtlety) is very important, however.
Henri Lefebvre and Erich Fromm offer very rich analysis of issues like these. Fromm’s work also is relatively easy to read (whereas wading through Lefebvre’s writing is very time-consuming). Both of those intellectuals have distinct strengths — in works that I find very insightful and constructive.
The three concepts I’ve mentioned — that is, reification, fetishism, and alienation — tend to be associated with Marxism, which is consistent with Rebecca Armstrong’s anti-capitalist stance. People who aren’t Marxists or anti-capitalists still can and still should appreciate these issues, though. I think the exerpts from Ms. Armstrong’s writing helps to convey the importance of those issues.
In The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann approach those concepts (particularly reification) from a non-Marxist perspective. The book is very liberal (as Steven Seidman has indicated in his own text Contested Knowledge). I find their book worthwhile, but Berger and Luckmann focus too much on individuals.
There are academic books about alienation. Of course, the authors of those texts present different perspectives on what ‘alienation’ is. (Scholars have presented a loss of traditions as a form of ‘alienation,’ for example. Like others, I wouldn’t call those particular social changes a form of ‘alienation.’)
—
About the photo of fabric art works
at the top of this blog post -
The design on the t-shirt on the right side of the photo was drawn by Leia Beland-Rawson (with fabric marker).
Melissa Parrot screened the other three t-shirts –
after others designed them.
The shirts were made at the East Village Arts Coop here in London, Ontario, Canada.
At the Indie Media Fair, Kevin photographed the t-shirt rack from further away.
=============
A few related posts on this blog -
- “Producing or just consuming?”
- “Without their money”
- “Home-grown food“
4 responses so far ↓
1 Annick // May 28, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I like this post, but the title amuses me, and not in a good way.
“Productive crafts” — It seems almost like an oxymoronic positioning, or at least as if you’re trying to point out that *these* crafts are, remarkably and exceptionally, useful, whereas most crafts are not.
Though I understand that in popular discourse the word craft is less associated with a beautiful, important, time-honoured practice than with a mess of string, plastic, glue and too many popsickle sticks, in my mind the modifier “productive” is redundant when placed in front of “crafts.”
Though I call this an error, your words are entirely bemusing. How can we define “crafts”? Should our definitions change? Do we call things like tee-shirt making “crafts” and not “art” because the result is practical, not beautiful? Or isn’t it both?
Speaking of the craft/art binary, which immediately connotes for me feminine/masculine low culture/high culture — is it antiquated? Was it ever a relevant distinction?
2 Toban Black // May 30, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Basically the title was my way of saying that there are productive crafts — which should be appreciated for their productivity. That title is a way of saying that crafts can be constructive and important.
Clearly you think that some crafts are underappreciated (e.g. in “popular discourse”). Actually, it seems as though you might want to highlight the productivity of any and all crafts.
(Correct me if I’m wrong here; I don’t think there’s any need for me to extend this invitation — since you’ll probably enjoy presenting some sort of opposing angle — but there it is.)
I threw in the Indie Media Fair photo and links because I was thinking about crafts and arts together — as though they’re very similar. The Indie Media Fair happens to have artistic leanings (though people who haven’t been to it generally wouldn’t know that). Alternative media messages also are part of that Fair, of course, and those messages also aren’t just about practical usefulness — in any commonplace sense. Basically, there’s a very loose theme about a variety of hand-made products. The t-shirt example in Ms. Armstrong’s article does fit more with standard approaches to usefulness, but there’s more to the post.
I won’t just evade these issues though -
I’m prepared to say that some crafts are more productive than others.
What do you think?
I happen to think that the mending, if not making, clothing is relatively important.
As for the usual flea market folk art - How much does it have to offer to society and the world at large? (Obviously there are people who like those sorts of crafts; but what do their tastes have to do with society at large?)
As for notions of high culture and low culture -
They’re social constructions that some people take seriously; so the distinctions are real — in people’s perceptions and practices. (Relative to Anglo North America, those particular cultural distinctions are more entrenched in Europe though — obviously.)
3 Annick // Jun 16, 2009 at 5:21 pm
“That title is a way of saying that crafts can be constructive and important.”
I figured as much, but that’s not the way it comes off.
“Actually, it seems as though you might want to highlight the productivity of any and all crafts.”
Not really. See: my comments re: plastic and string. It depends on how you define craft.
“I was thinking about crafts and arts together — as though they’re very similar.”
That’s where I would agree.
Craft seems to signify an overwhelming number of things. But in Old English, it meant skill, art, etc. which would apply to our contemporary conception of fine arts. I brought up the question because I was thinking of things like textile arts, which are often not considered as “high culture”, whereas a Titian would be.
“I’m prepared to say that some crafts are more productive than others.
What do you think?
I happen to think that the mending, if not making, clothing is relatively important.
As for the usual flea market folk art - How much does it have to offer to society and the world at large?”
Our lives would be very dull if we thought in such utilitarian terms, admit it. Is there nothing to be said for promoting and maintaining artistic production, whether it can serve a purpose or not?
“All art is utterly useless.”–O. Wilde, and he meant it as a good thing
4 Toban Black // Jun 21, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Well, I haven’t rejected artistic creativity, or artistic aesthetics, or artistic open-endedness, or other characteristics of art; and I do appreciate art.
But who is going to make and mend the clothing of the people who make art? Should people who work on art (at times — if not as a career) just leave it to others to handle the clothing crafts — even if those workers basically are slaves? (… if we broaden the concept of ’slavery’ beyond more straightforward forms of ownership)
The materials for the clothes also have to come from somewhere, and there are problems (e.g. ecologically) on that front as well; and then there are issues with waste disposal.
If artists ignore and draw attention away from those problems — and/or others — aren’t the artists part of such problems?
If so, how artistic is that participation in those problems (e.g. ecological destruction)? (How beautiful is it? How creative is it? Etc.)
What I’m getting at is that the Wilde quotation is nihilistic and irresponsible.
Clothing issues are just one example.
If we lived in a different society, we might not have so many major problems around us; but there are a lot of problems —
which art must be linked to in some way, since art is part of our societies too.
What is Wilde saying about “useless”ness, anyway? Isn’t that statement an attempt to pretend that art has nothing to do with society at large? (Such a perspective certainly is consistent with how people in and around art scenes tend to try to insulate themselves in bubbles.) Yet, if we take Wilde at his word, he also is saying that art is wasteful — since any resources expended for it don’t amount to anything. Art often does actually serve purposes though — by bringing inspiration, for instance. (How is something truly “useless” if it inspires?)
We can assess the contributions that art brings (e.g. beautification) and the purposes it serves — as well as the costs of art (to use the term “costs” in a sense that extends well beyond just money). The Wilde quotation is a way of dodging those sorts of judgments. I mean, people can supplement his words with a different approach, but I think the basic messages about “useless”ness that I’m describing is blatant and obvious.
Wilde happened to produce his work during the height of the British empire — and during a time when earlier industrial capitalism in Britain was very brutal. He didn’t make any constructive contribution to those problems; instead, he basically just drew attention away from them. (And did he actually make any deliberate efforts to support gay people?) (Someone could argue that he mocked the elites, but how far did he really take those criticisms?)
(You haven’t actually presented Wilde as an example of a great artist, so I don’t mean to imply that I’m criticizing anything you said by commenting on him like this. I could just as well have focused on someone who you didn’t mention.)
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