goldsmithsdesign

In Conversation: Jonnet Middleton and Mathilda Tham

The Goldsmiths Fashion Research Unit invites you to:

In Conversation: Jonnet Middleton and Mathilda Tham

Tuesday 16th June 2015, 2pm – 4pm
Design Department, Lockwood Building, Room 301
Goldsmiths, London SE14 6NW

This event marks the recent publication of the Routledge Handbook for Sustainability and Fashion co-edited by Professor Kate Fletcher and Professor Mathilda Tham. It gathers 28 chapters by authors who are both academics and practitioners including chapters by both Mathilda Tham and Jonnet Middleton.

Mathilda will speak about the process behind the book and then her practice of a systemic futures approach to fashion, which the book also reflects. Jonnet will speak on Mending, Mothering and Mattering which brings a maternal subjectivity to her research on mending drawing on Lisa Baraitser’s Maternal Encounters.

The two presentations will be followed by an informal conversation.

This event is free and open to the public.
Please RSVP to fashion[@]gold.ac.uk.

Mathilda Tham’s work sits in a positive, creative and activist space between design, futures studies and sustainability. Originally a fashion designer, today Mathilda’s work is concerned with the design of futures scenarios for new ways of engaging with fashion, the design of processes of change and shared learning experiences, and the design of new research methods.

Jonnet Middleton is an art activist and PhD candidate at Highwire doctoral training centre for radical innovation in the digital economy, Lancaster University. Jonnet has a background in fashion design, prison education, ethnomusicology and Spanish TV presenting. Her PhD is titled ”The Age of Mending: New materialist futures for digital and non-digital things”

‘xvshow’ opening night

This year’s final exhibition for BA Design students, ‘xvshow’, showcases a variety of thought-provoking and innovative work. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s your last chance: the show is still open today until 4 pm, at The Old Truman Brewery.

We had a great opening night on Friday, and the place was buzzing with guests asking questions and having fun with the interactive displays.

The helmets from Will Gubbins' display 'Touch at a Distance' got a lot of attention — The helmets from Will Gubbins’ display ‘Touch at a Distance’ got a lot of attention

Continue reading “‘xvshow’ opening night”

Venture into fields of interrogation at xvshow

Article by BA Design alumna Belen Palacios

A year after my own degree show, I had the chance to visit the BA Design 3rd year students while they set up xv show. Thriving beyond the fatigue, they talk about their initial steps, their goals, their challenges and the way in which their designs interrogate our world.

Some projects blur the lines in between the designer and the performer. Lukas Valiauga has explored the limits of personal identity in neo-capitalism. He has made himself a product for which every decision is a strategical formulation in between risk and potential. He explains that by using performance to look at his persona from a strategic point of view, everything in his life has become a prop. His amended suit and his raised shoes make him a puppet of what his investors want him to become. Even though his performance might seem extreme, he urges the audience to question “how is that different to any of us?” Lukas will be giving speeches to stakeholders during the show and you can buy shares of Luck Inc. to decide the future of his enterprise. Continue reading “Venture into fields of interrogation at xvshow”

The 2015 Degree exhibition ‘xvshow’ is almost here

xvshow

This year’s Undergraduate Degree show, ‘xvshow’, will open tomorrow, 5 June, with the private view evening, and will then be open to the public until 8 June at 4 pm. The place is The Old Truman Brewery, Ely’s Yard, 15 Hanbury Street, postcode E1 6QR.

“Out there is a world filled with complexity and contradictions; built from infinite intertwining systems; where change is the only constant; where uncertainty is certain and defining is problematic.

Here you will find a design practice which acknowledges, engages with, enjoys and acts upon the complexity of the world. Here you will navigate through fields of interrogation which intersect and then separate, which connect and then contradict”, says the show’s manifesto.

Don’t miss xvshow! And before you visit, have a look at the show’s website to find out what the projects are all about in a nutshell, and where they stand on different scales of Public/Private, Artificial/Natural, Fiction/Reality etc.