Wearing is publishing is reading
by Anouk Beckers
Opening:
Friday March 17, 18.00-21.00
Exhibition:
Saturday March 18, 14:00 – 17:00
Saturday March 25, 14:00 – 17:00
Saturday April 1, 14:00 – 17:00
and on appointment via hello@anoukbeckers.nl
Wearing is publishing is reading
In continuation of Booklook, a project in which Anouk Beckers develops hybrid magazine-garments that can be unfolded and refolded in either one of them, she used her residency period at Plan B to transform fashion magazines and posters into wearable items.
The garment’s ghost
Although fashion might seem inseparable from garments and bodies, in fashion media we, as readers, interact with fashion by looking at garments, not through wearing them. Using this reality as a starting point, Anouk Beckers explores how fashion media relate to the ‘reality’ of the garment and body, and the interaction between the two. Dissecting a stack of existing fashion magazines by cutting, folding, weaving and rearranging the content, she opens up the layers and spaces between the elements on a page. For example, the simple act of cutting out a garment and lifting it from the page, turns it into an odd-shaped blob; out of context and out of shape. These shapes as well as the left-over voids in the page, the ‘garment ghosts’, point out the dynamics between the various elements on the page. They invite us to refocus, to shift between models, backdrop, surroundings and texts, and redefine the meanings depicted on these glossy pages.
Secondly, Anouk brings the pages of these magazines together into a wearable garment. As such we are invited to not only insert our perspectives, but also our bodies in between the pages and the various elements represented on them.
When posters become pockets, purses and pouches, or bags
In addition to this research, Anouk used the Plan B poster archive, designed by Our Polite Society, as a material to fold bags, purses, pouches and pockets from. Comprising of 36 unique textual posters (one for each exhibition organized at Plan B) it led to an extensive collection of items that can be read and used as a carrier, or both. Cut open, folded and layered, the order of the content of the poster shifts; new words surface, interact and form new narratives. Readable texts shapeshift into abstract forms. Re-arranged and re-shaped without discarding any material, Anouk shows how each single bag is defined and affected by the content of the posters and how each poster can be re-read through folding.
Extending and elaborating on this folding exercise of Plan B’s poster archive, Anouk’s own exhibition poster (also designed by Our Polite Society) invites visitors to fold their own bag.
Address:
Mertens Frames Project Space by Plan B
Hamerstraat 22
1021 JV Amsterdam
Info:
anoukbeckers.nl
booklook.website
Instagram.com/anouksbeckers
instagram.com/plan_b_projects
Mertens Frames Project Space by Plan B is a collaboration between Plan B and Mertens Frames. Hosted by Mertens Frames Project Space, Plan B presents a program of exhibitions and events in a former award shop in Amsterdam Noord.
Graphic design by Our Polite Society