Blue Top | 100 Replicas | 100% Cotton
Blue Top | 100 Replicas | 100% Cotton
Year: 2008
Technique: 100% cotton toile cuttings, polyester foam, needle and cotton, A6 postcards with instructions
BLUE TOP / 100 REPLICAS / 100% COTTON is an action for the AIRSWAP Project, within Social Art Praxes at MANIFESTA 7.
Airswap is a public art intervention, meant to take place in airport zones, based on the participation and sharing between the local creative context, public or private institutions and tourists /travellers taking part to the action.
Its dynamic is based on three main elements: the materials (dresses), swapping of materials between travellers, the changes brought by the creative context where the action takes place.
In the airport, inside the AIRSWAP pavilion, the travellers can see the dresses, which are the result of other travellers swapping and that have already been modified, and they can choose the artifact they prefer, swapping it with a piece of their own. Artists will see and modify the dresses. Once the dresses modified, they will be put in the swapping process again.
BLUE TOP / 100 REPLICAS / 100% COTTON is a speculation on the concept of originality in the mass production.
The BLUE TOP intervention consists in manufacturing a toile cutting from the original shape of the garment.
A series of 100 pieces, 100% cotton (front and back), of the same colour as the original Blue Top, is made available in the Airswap Pavilion in order to ask the visitors (travelers) to sew an authentic copy using needles and cotton threads made available in the pavillion.
The replica they sew loses the original characteristics of being wearable. The original blue top is made of flexible synthetic fabric and the toile cuttings are made of 100% cotton, therefore they do not have the same elasticity to fit a person.
Thus, the visitors are invited to make these hybrid unsuitable cloths, but also to be part of the intervention within AIRSWAP. At the end, they can take home their own copy of Blue Top, a textile object without a functional purpose, and with it, the idea of changing the value of everyday things.