Finding (de)coloniality

We are in the midst of the countdown. 4 November will soon be upon us. Erica de Greef has arrived from South Africa and has hit the ground running: meeting people in preparation for the conversations on 4 November and already sharing her research and experiences with the other residents in the Van Eyck.

Yesterday in the Van Eyck restaurant, we had a kind of revolving-door set of serial meetings. Elisa van Joolen became one of our lunch companions and I was thankful because it will be my job to co-ordinate the conversation around her artwork and I wanted to talk with her about it. Her work, entitled 'Portal', was first made and displayed by State of Fashion in Arnhem's 'Searching for the New Luxury' exhibition two summers ago. It has lived on vigorously in various iterations since then, and we are delighted to be able to share it again at the Van Eyck where the artist is now in residence.

The work offers a window onto the complex relationships that people have with their own clothing. Elisa has been able to tailor the artwork to reflect the different kinds of people who participate to produce the work, whether children or senior citizens. Each participant removes a piece of clothing of their choice and draws its outline on a large piece of white paper-like material. He or she then responds to questions about the item, questions related to price, origins and personal affinity to the piece. Pieces with comparable themes are then connected by lines of a particular colour. The result is a colour-coded pictorial display of a group's relationships to their clothing.

Given the theme of 4 November, I wondered out loud whether this 'Portal' could display (de)coloniality? What it reveals specifically is how we, in the West, relate to clothing. Can it reveal how we don't relate to clothing? Can we see absences in this portal? Don't we just find precisely our own mentalities reflected back to us? One of the characteristics of both colonialism and capitalism is the convenient 'forgetting' of Other peoples: ones who are removed from their land by extraction activities; ones whose clothing traditions disappear because they cannot compete in the global economic climate; ones whose producers of exquisite indigenous pieces are deskilled by working stupid, repetitive jobs in factories.  In the words of G.T. Reyes, these people are made invisible. How could such a Portal bring out what is unknown and almost never thought about? Can it be made a theme of comparison and thus earn its own set of colourful connective lines? 

Femke de Vries, thoughtful designer and analyst of clothing and instructor at ArtEZ, was also present at our lunch table. "Decoloniality is also about self-awareness," she pointed out. "It is a process. It is about finding meaning. In this Portal has enormous impact. It encourages people to think about their relationship to clothing." 

I had to think of the evening before, when Erica de Greef presented unusual, artistic fashion films from South Africa. Femke's insights on that occasion also gave pause. "When you sketch the context to these films, it allows me to see them in a new light, " she explained to Erica and the other viewers. "I don't know anything about this South African context. When you provide background explanations, I am thrown back on myself, and I perceive that I must unlearn my 'usual' responses and newly learn according to the new information. This is humbling and it makes me careful. It is another culture and deserves respect." 

I had been re-reading G.T. Reyes that morning, and what Femke de Vries said then also brought his words to mind:

"Coloniality does not only operate systemically; it also functions at the personal level. Engagement in praxis must then also be intimate and mindful, starting with the self. It questions the construction of one’ s entire being: Why am I how I am? Why do I think what I think? Why do I do what I do?

At minimum, such questioning is uncomfortable, but discomfort can be temporary. What is of

importance in this process of becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable is developing the

tools to be radically mindful in the moment of experiencing discomfort. Radical mindfulness

moves beyond traditional purposes of mindfulness that intend for individuals to become more aware of their inner experience and how they interact with the world around them. Radical

mindfulness particularly assists peoples impacted by coloniality to navigate the compounding and

cumulative ways that systems of oppression impact mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical

health. Actively working through discomfort in critical and humanizing ways opens up  transformative possibilities. Without doing so, people remain unaware or complicit in the colonial

project and therefore reproduce it. Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable requires

visibilizing and critically examining of the underlying sociohistorical reasons that cause the discomfort in the first place."

I looked at Femke and thanked her. "What you have just experienced this evening, while watching Erica de Greef's films, and what you have expressed, is precisely what we hope to achieve on 4 November. This must be one of the most fundamental goals of our event; it has the power to be transformative into the future." 

What about the People (and their clothing systems)?

Here at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (The Netherlands) all roads are pointing to 4 November when our Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion will host its day-long event,  Conversations to Redress a Fashion Disaster.

My first task, as a resident of the Academy, is to situate the ideas of the RCDF in the discourse on fashion and sustainability. We need to be clear about the link between decolonization, fashion and climate change. Within the present, dominant discourse, this link is not obvious.  

I looked up frameworks constructed by some prominent organizations to ameliorate fashion problems.  One was provided by the 'Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action' a UN initiative to facilitate the fashion industry meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement. Not surprisingly the emphasis is placed on: 

·      low-carbon solutions and eliminating coal, 

·      reducing climate emissions from operations 

·      more efficient resource use  

Another framework was constructed by Fashion for Good. This initiative was co-founded by William McDonough, famous for having conceived (together with Michael Braungart) the notion of 'cradle-to-cradle', the core concept of the circular economy. He advocates "... an aspirational framework we can all use to work towards a world in which we do not simply take, make, waste, but rather take, make, renew, restore." This framework involves five 'goods':

·      Good Materials - safe, healthy and designed for reuse and recycling

·      Good Economy - growing, circular, shared and benefiting everyone

·      Good Energy - renewable and clean

·      Good Water - clean and available to all

·      Good Lives - living and working conditions that are just, safe and dignified

From these and other action plans, the familiar image of centre and periphery emerges. The centre is 'the fashion industry'; the periphery feeds it by supplying the raw materials and labour during production operations. The goal appears to be business as usual, radical only in encouraging more skilful treatment of material and ethical treatment of labour.

Other activist fashion groups echo the two examples that I have presented here; the discourse appears to have gelled around a focus on materials and energy use and labour ethics. 

Once again, the people and their culture are left out. I was relieved to hear Naomi Klein, in a recent talk about climate, disparaging goals and strategies that were to enable "change without having to change at all", "looking for a fix that is going to leave the status quo pretty much unchanged". 

"Now, as these so-called solutions are advanced .... the people ... seem to disappear .... This chronic forgetfulness about 'inconvenient other people' is the thread that unites so many fateful climate policies of recent years." (12.54) 

Her talk was about climate mitigation technologies but her insight applies to fashion. In the entire history of fashion studies, fashion theorists have rigorously and consistently denied that 'other' people have their own fashion systems. It is logical and consistent, therefore, that in this time of deep crisis, the clothing systems of the labourers producing the Western fashions continue to be denied or forgotten.  Similarly the clothing systems of indigenous peoples whose lands, forests and cultural systems are being destroyed are never mentioned. Why would there be attention, in a time of crisis, for something the existence of which has never been acknowledged by the industry? With sales estimated at $1.34 trillion in 2018, it would not in their bullying, maximizing interest.

Some organizations set up to ameliorate the 'fashion problem' have gone a little further in their focus. Fashion Revolution, for example, acknowledges culture in point 4 of its Manifesto.  

"Fashion respects culture and heritage. It fosters, celebrates and rewards skills and craftsmanship. It recognises creativity as its strongest asset. Fashion never appropriates without giving due credit or steals without permission. Fashion honours the artisan."

While there is mention of culture, heritage and appropriation, the focus is nevertheless still the needs of the Western fashion system. Point 4 fails to go so far as to consider the existence of, let alone support for, alternative clothing/fashion systems.

This is the narcissistic focus that the RCDF is trying to disrupt by shifting the floodlight to the periphery. This morning, I was inspired to write a list of Do's and Don'ts to bring attention to the cracks in the framework of even the most sincere attempts to redress the deleterious effects of 'the fashion system' on the environment.

Do's and Don'ts for 

Greenwashing your Clothing Purchases

Do buy clothing that is made responsibly by workers who receive a fair wage, work no more than 48 hours a week, are not children, have negotiating rights, and are allowed to form a union. 

            Don't enquire further about what has compelled them to take up a factory job -- whether they are migrants, widows, or forced off their land, whether they have small children at home, or are forced to bring them to the factory. Don't even think that they may be, or once were, designers in their own right and have their own clothing system that they would rather be attending to if market forces were less oriented to the centre. Do tow the line and convince yourself that a job in 'the' fashion industry is a boon because 'at least they have an income'. 

Do buy clothing that involves low transportation costs because emissions from transportation, both by sea and air, are contributing alarmingly and increasingly to global warming.

            Don't even think about buying local. The price will be too high. Don't think about local craft systems that are unsupported and disappearing because labour 'is so much cheaper' off-shore.     Don't think about alternative clothing systems that may be disappearing on this planet so that production for 'the Western fashion system' may thrive. 

Do try to purchase clothing with pure and natural fibres as this will reduce the use of fibres made from hydrocarbons and facilitate recycling.

            Don't ask yourself who is growing the cotton/linen/hemp/silk/wool, where it is coming from and how its production fits into and influences their lives. Does it enhance or is it deleterious? In the first place you will have a hard time finding the answers; in the second place, it may take your focus away from "the look" and your humanity might mean that you reject a beautiful item of clothing just because you care about the well-being of other people.

            Don't bother your head about ecosystems that might have been transformed or destroyed to fit into the 'supply chain' of Western fashion.