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.
**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.
**Misha Bleijs** is a fashion designer. She has been working with clothes for as long as she can remember. Whether she went to thrift stores looking for interesting and unique pieces, or whether she just took old clothes from her closet and completely cut them into pieces to experiment with it. she did everything as long as it had to do with textiles. And that’s how her passion for fashion and design started.
She now is a 3rd year fashion design student at HKU. There she is busy discovering her own style and learning new approaches to design. In her work she often brings out the imperfections and rawness. She also is very interested in culture and community. That’s something that plays a major role in her work.
**Madeleine** is studying fashion and textile design. Her process for making garments starts with the textile. She looks at how contrasting textiles work together, which she explores through knit, weaving, dyeing processes, pleating, quilting, patchwork and more.
She’s always been into upcycling and finding creative ways to take old clothes that weren’t ‘for her’ and other materials she had found and turning them into something she could wear. She’s brought that through to her recent work, and has the urge to push that further, and that’s what drew her to the work Denzel is doing.
Madeleine takes a lot of inspiration from her community of creatives at home in Ireland, where serious ideas present themselves in the form of satire and subliminal messaging, and projects are executed with a make-do, collaborative approach.
**Nathan Schotvanger** is a 20-year-old fashion enthusiast with a desire to learn more about the industry and the creation process of garments. Currently, he's following the Jean School International Course at Denim City. This is a 1-year course that specializes in Denim Design & Development, located in Amsterdam. Nathan likes to experiment with styles and wants to explore the industry through arts, culture, and sustainability.
His focus lies in trying new things, such as working with different textures, treatments, materials, and ideas. Trying to add an extra layer to denimwear with sustainable materials or techniques. For his internship at Denzel Veerkamp he wants to learn more about the perspective of an artist and how to bind a strong story to a concept or project.
