A panel discussion with Gluklya, Keti Chukhrov and Djurdja Bartlett, moderated by Elena Zaytseva.
What will we be wearing after the pandemic? How will we make what we wear? Will the global fashion industry change the way it treats those who make our clothes?
Gluklya
The dress for Babi, 2020
The impact of the fashion industry on everyday life and to the climate change has been huge in the past few decades. The temporary halt of the fast fashion industry due to the coronavirus lockdown has changed attitudes to fashion in the ‘first world’ and broken the vicious circle of never-satisfied consumption and climate damage. However, it has also affected the lives of those who work in sweatshops of fast fashion in Asia, Caucasus and Eastern Europe, leaving the most vulnerable workers of that industry even more unprotected.
Will it be possible to restart the economy of clothes in a new way: fair for workers, safe for the planet, and enjoyable for those who care about clothes? This is the topic under discussion in an online panel with artist Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya), philosopher Keti Chukhrov, and historian of fashion Djurdja Bartlett of UAL.
Gluklya
Evening Dress, 2020
Speaking from Amsterdam, Gluklya, an artist whose career has focused on the ways that clothes signify social relations and histories of communities, will present her recent research. Supported by the Mondrian Foundation, the research deals with the lives of the workers employed by Western high street fashion brands in Indonesia. Gluklya has developed a theory of ‘witches of our days’, claiming that women workers on fashion production lines have been pushed to the edges of the society and dehumanised like medieval witches.
While Gluklya focuses on the production part of fashion, Keti Chukhrov, speaking from Moscow, writes about the consumption end, exploring the desire that is formed by the industry of fashion in our society. She investigates the role of fetish in the work of Demna Gvasalia (founder of Vetements and current creative director of Balenciaga), upending notions of ‘wealth’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘poverty.
Historian of fashion Djurdja Bartlett, speaking from London, is also searching for a new order after this pandemic. How it will affect the fashion system, from its complex production models to its varied models of global consumption? Will fashion become a more just structure world-wide, or will its persisting geopolitical inequalities still punish the most vulnerable among its producers and consumers?
A link to the Zoom event will be sent out 24 hours before the start time.
Because we are unable to hold events in the house at present, Pushkin House has lost several vital income streams. Please donate to ensure that we can re-open at full strength, and continue to deliver our wonderful cultural programme. No amount is too small. Thank you!
About the contributors
Born in St. Petersburg, Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya (artist name Gluklya) lives and works in Amsterdam and St -Petersburg. Known as one of the pioneers of the post-Soviet performance, she co-founded a collective ‘Factory of Found Clothes’ (FFC) and the ‘Chto Delat’ Group. In 2012, the FFC developed into The Utopian Unemployment Union, an inclusive project that embraced art, social science and pedagogy to offer to the groups of diverse social backgrounds chance to produce art together. Few years ago Gluklya passionately threw herself into work with migrants in Amsterdam, concluding with the street performance Carnival of Oppressed Feelings in October 28th, 2017. In 2019 the work was presented in Van Abbe museum as part of ‘Positions-4’ curated by Charles Eshe. Gluklya’s work Clothes for Demonstration Against False Elections was included in the main project of the 56th Venice Biennale of Art curated by Okwui Enwezor (2015). Her most recent project, conducted in dialogue with the Fashion Revolution movement, will be concluded in Monument of Unpaid Labour, planned to be shown in Berlin at the exhibition ‘Disturbance: Witch’ at the ZAK Citadel Spandau.
Keti Chukhrov is a philosopher. She is an associate professor at the Department of Сultural Studies at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). Her books include: To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (2011), Pound & £ (Logos, 1999) and a volume of dramatic poetic writing: Just Humans (2010). Her present research and publications focus on: the impact of the Soviet economy on the ethical models of historical socialism; performance studies; and neo-humanism in the conditions of post-human theories. Her plays Love-machines, Communion, and Global Congress of Post-prostitution ran at the Bergen Assembly in 2013, Ljubljana Triennial in 2015 and Steirischer Herbst in 2019. Her book Practising the Good. Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism is soon to be out at the University of Minnesota Press.
Dr Djurdja Bartlett is Reader in Histories and Cultures of Fashion at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, where she directs the Transnational Fashion Hub. She is also member of the research centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) at UAL. Bartlett is author of FashionEast: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism (2010), editor of the volume on East Europe, Russia and the Caucasus in the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (2010), and co-editor of Fashion Media: Past and Present (2013). Bartlett is editor of the book Fashion and Politics, to which she also contributed the essay ‘Can Fashion Be Defended?’ (2019). Bartlett’s new monograph European Fashion Histories: Style, Society and Politics has been funded by an AHRC Fellowship grant. Bartlett has organized numerous academic and public events, such as the international conference on ‘Fashion and Politics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’ (LCF, UAL, 2017) and the Symposium ‘New Borders, New Boundaries: Fashion in a Shifting World’ (ICA, London, Calvert 22, London, and Chelsea College of Art, UAL, 2018).