being handed ready-made printed t-shirts for most of them wanted to print them
themselves. They were interested in doing rather than having.
This experiment made it clear that what mattered most to the visitors at the gallery
was the possibility to do things for themselves, to participate and to learn new
things, much more than receiving the ready-made article. The great gift was to
learn how to work and how to do-it-yourself. This desire thus became something
of the opposite of the ideas of YOMANGO, limiting the importance of commodi-
ties to instead highlight the desire amongst participants to make things and learn
how-to. In this case the desire for liberation concerned skills rather than objects.
The main interest is not to receive objects of self-enhancement delivered from the
top, ready-made, but to ritualize these processes through knowledge or myth-cre-
ating rituals. These would be rituals through which things make sense, connect,
and are allowed to grow into some form of symbiotic relation to the wearer. It is an
emphasis on taking back the right for interpretation and for encouraging praxis.
&
Yet a central question remains. How can the “shallow” value of fashion be tuned to
address the question of empowerment and self-enhancement? Can fashion be used
for a constructive praxis of liberation? Could it be a hands-on crafting work done
within a grassroots community, perhaps even within groups who are not the usual
consumers of fashion, yet be employed by us all in our daily lives? Then what could
be the resources used and how could they be connected to the forces within the
fashion system?
These questions were something I tried to engage with in a series of projects, first
in Istanbul together with the Turkish art group Oda Projesi, and later in two ses-
sions at Merimetsa, a rehabilitation centre in Tallinn.
SHRWR is an activist group from Gothen-
burg who creates protocols for free clothing or
“sharewear”. Sharewear is clothing owned
and paid for by no one. It is a concept of
sharing garments as well as services and to
keep things free. They “liberate” clothes from
ownership, extracting labels and replacing
them with their Sharewear labels. They also
make own collections, spread the patterns as
open source and re-make existing clothes in
open workshops to set them free. “Because
sharing is caring. Ownership is out of
fashion.”