Friday’s Art Factory workshop at ILAM saw Grahamstown’s street performers gathered round an improvised ironing board with the task of designing and making their own plastic clothing. We introduced the participants to the process, who immediately busied themselves with various tasks. Some of the children set about meticulously cutting out plastic against the patterns of their own clothing, some used the irons to ‘sew’ their outfits, while others drew out plans for their customization. The job was slow, but the participants worked well as a group. They focused on just one or two outfits at a time, which they worked on according to the design specifications of the child for whom each particular garment was being made. There was a fascinating integration of imagery from popular culture and other more personal references. There were shirts, for instance, which borrowed designs from the soccer uniforms of Bafana Bafana, and more specifically; names of heroes like Maradona. Some appropriated the branding of the goods the plastics originally packaged.
There is a model of street performance which any Festival goer will be familiar with. Children with painted faces hold stationary poses until passers-by drop coins into their coffers, and catalyze some variety of dance or performance. Often the performers wear unusually assembled costumes. Some costumes are thematic, some apparently put together without a particular unity in mind. What similarity does connect the various pieces of the more eclectic costumes is simply that they are unusual. The more out of the ordinary, the more striking the overall costume, hence the performer stands out more; and with luck, earns more. ‘Othering’ is more often than not an active process, but rarely is it so graphically played out. Although the performers are complicit in the problematic exchange, the power is usually in the hands putting down coins. It is necessary for the performers to define their appearance in opposition to the conventions of the society from which they are hoping to benefit. Appearance and identity are close and troublesome bedfellows. The extent to which one defines oneself by what one wears is debatable, but clothing certainly has a deeply complex semiotics – the implications of clothing are unavoidable.
The art factory is facilitating a process whereby the cast-off materials are positively appropriated – no longer to be worn as markers of abjection, but rather as indications of agency. It is perhaps contradictory that wearing waste materials (essentially) is an affirming statement – but perhaps that this contradiction can be so simply implemented (that the workshop participants can and do make beautiful and interesting garments) undermines assumed truths. Branded clothing relies on a societal framework which glorifies the individual to justify its value. It was meaningful to see a group of youths working together, rearranging and manipulating branding into new forms, which marked both belonging to their particular group, and their individual agency within that group. It felt like something important was happening.