summary: This worksession intends to be a moment of collective learning, to make tangible invisible colonial mechanisms of hierarchy and oppression that are prevalent in everyday communication technologies, yet often difficult to comprehend.
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**Date:** Saturday, 18 May 2024
**Time:** 11:00 - 17:00 (free lunch for participants)
**Location:** Varia, (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)
**Note:** this session will be held in english
**Participation:** is limited, to join please send an email to info@varia.zone with [colonial infrastructures: fashion] in the subject.
Colonial Infrastructures worksessions intend to be moments of collective learning to make tangible invisible colonial mechanisms of hierarchy and oppression that are prevalent in everyday communication technologies, yet often difficult to comprehend. This time we focus our attention on the fashion industry. Together we will undertake collective research into how geopolitical conflicts intersect this complex realm, with Denzel Veerkamp, and consider citation practices in relation to fashion, with Chinouk Filique de Miranda.
This day long event will interconnect the researches of both practitioners through an ongoing sewing activity intertwined with reading and discussion. Denzel's practice is rooted by intuitive relationships around fabric, tailoring and pattern making, Chinouk's research is focused on fashions intangible existences in digital culture. While contrasting materially, their practices consider deeply the agency of both maker and user/wearer when traversing, working and dealing with fashion's colonial entanglements.
Participants are asked to bring old green and red clothes to contribute to our collective garment. We will begin making this during the workshop, while having conversations and reading texts together. Together we will weave our thoughts around multidimensional authorship, power agencies between various actors of the fashion industry, anti-extractivist methods, and uses of fashion beyond capitalist profit.
No sewing skills are necessary, a desire to weave our thoughts together and reflect while making things with your hands is enough. Once completed, our collective garment will be used to gather aid for Palestinian people.
If you wish to attend, please send an email to info@varia.zone introducing yourself and what motivates you to attend in a few lines, with [colonial infrastructures: fashion] in the subject. There will be a vegan lunch for everyone attending the workshop.
This series falls under Varia's Counter Coloniality research thread and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.
**Chinouk Filique de Miranda** is a design researcher and critical fashion practitioner. She analyses, translates and visualises the crossover between the fashion system and digital culture with a focus on introducing digital literacy to fashion. In her practice she approaches fashion as a subliminal communication vehicle which she aims to de-mystify in order to inform consumers on complex matters regarding individual agency within fashions' digital landscape.
**Denzel Veerkamp** is a socio-culturally engaged designer navigating topics such as dual-heritage identity and transgenerational history. Born in Amsterdam to a Dutch mother and Surinamese father, Veerkamp meticulously intertwines collective pains of Dutch-Surinamese history with his own confrontations. His upcycling- design practice intertwines storytelling, traditional Surinamese costumes, adventurous patchworks, textile contrasts, and playful volumes. Veerkamp challenges Eurocentric approaches, striving to unlearn imposed narratives, replacing them with alternative realities. Through his work, he critiques Western, capitalist fashion systems, fostering discomfort, openness, interaction, and innovation in his transformative narrative.
