code map they again trigger the circle for other participants, inspired by the previ-
ous crafters’ code.
The participants in González’ workshops become practical fashion programmers,
using the energy of the brand as they reinterpret it and draw their own new lines
through the map. They sample and remix the brand with their own hands-on craft
interventions. In his book Postproduction (2002b), Nicholas Bourriaud calls the
actors of such a practice “semionauts” – producing own pathways through sign
systems.
The semionauts in González’ process work with already defined concepts and signs,
published as parts of a brand. They transform them through re-linking and crosso-
ver formations, inventing new protocols of use and transgressing modes of repre-
sentation by post-producing them. According to Bourriaud, “The prefix ‘post’ does
not signal any negation or surpassing; it refers to a zone of activity.” (17) The “post”
is the drawing of new lines of practice, reconnecting sampled parts into new forms.
“We tinker with production, we surf on a network of signs, we insert our forms on
existing lines.” (19) As with hacking, post-production is a tactic, and the semionaut
an agent in a culture of re-appropriation. Surely this approach can be said to be an
old practice but what Bourriaud emphasizes is that it is now the dominant one,
and it does not try to establish a position of the radically new or the avant-garde.
Instead it refers to the heroes of our time, the sampler, the remixer and the DJ. As I
have argued before, these are the lines produced by the abstract machine of hack-
tivism.
What we have seen in González’ project is something very different from the “de-
construction” or “upcycling” of high fashion, even if the material result might look
similar. What González does in the Hacking Couture workshops is to highlight the
shared endeavours and help us open new action spaces with the help of tools,
methods, and skills with which we can better understand and develop the practice
we do when we “hack” fashion. In these workshops we reverse engineer a brand,
draw new lines, re-program the code, “surf on the signs”, and “insert our forms on
existing lines” – keeping the power on.