COMME des MARXISTS -- White Columns, New York 2013 / Performa, 2013
Cat Walk - White Columns, New York / Peroforma 2013
Intallation view - White Columns, New York
this above listed web site is visible only to people with security clearance and is not accessible to you )
design/pattern: rainer ganahl
craft/ tailoring: jasmin hasmin
SNOWDENMARX.GOV
Edward Snowden with his revelation about the omni-presence of the N.S.A., the National Security Agency of the USA in all of our communications was the second story that really turned the political status quo up side down. Since Snowden, any promise or expectation for privacy in emails, info-clouds, electronic storage systems of any kind and in any remote verbal communication is futile and naïve. These unpreventable transparencies and monitoring conditions are not due to a few bad players or nations but omnipresent, permanent and intrinsic to the very technological grid that supports our lives. This inspired me to produce even two series. SNOWDENMARX.GOVis a title of the first one and plays with a website I could never acquire since it ends with .gov. I conceived this series nearly the day of the American whistle blower’s first revelations which I accompanied like an old time reporter with a pencil and drawing. The first large scale spying program on regular people we learned of was called PRISM. For these 5 pieces, I oriented myself on the idea of a prism which I associate with the style and the period of art deco and the elegant times of pre-electronic letter writing, notes, whispers, black and white photos and love and intrigue based spying operations in grand hotels with names like Hotel Royal, Imperial, Grand Hotel, Ritz, Plaza, Waldorf Astoria, and so on. I first made a drawing of a black lineless silhouette of two dresses in one and purchased the finest Japanese cotton I could find in New York City. The openings in the front and the back and the double layers of the dress reminded me of all those emigrant stories I listened to of people who had to escape Nazi occupation and were carrying money, documents and jewelry sewn into coats and garments. The anachronism and the skinny verticality constituted a wanted contrast to the technological status quo of today as well as one to the more sculptural and bulky works with felt.
MARX SNOWDEN SECURITY
The N.S.A. uses even computer programs to generate their big amounts of code words that are usually written together and appear in capital letters. I used some of these highly inspiring and significant terms like MAINWAY – the total amount of all captured gross data by the USA – or TEMPORA, the same secret dragnet operation but carried out by the British – and applied them onto the relatively hard to find and seldom used black safety jackets with reflective stripes worn by security firm laborers. This series is simply called MARX SNOWDEN SECURITY. Apart of N.S.A. code words that thanks to Edward Snowden where leaked to the media, I also included the names of the US and British information gathering agencies, the N.S.A and the GCHQ, the British equivalent and collaborator of the American intelligence agency.
SNOWDENMARX.GOV
please.. notice..all dresses weree worn here.. by accident the wrong way - back front
modellling: Isabell Lodge
correct way of dressing -
model: Adirian Saich
SNOWDENMARX.GOV
below - without text . (text not yet applied - above photoshop)
this is at the silk screen place
5 dresses - to be printed /silk screened on ... wiht design.. see below
dobule layered -- variants in the diamont openings and the bottom ..
to top dress - is shorter than the upper dress
also -- seams allowance.. (makes it more suspicious while border crossing -- private experience /// i had my ... -- sorry but yes. my butt - inspected --in the not os nice way.. when i was a hippy in teh 70s -- my family smugglers - grew up borer to switzerland and germany and it was cheaper and better but strict import regulations.. that had to be beaten adn trickedwiht .. every weekend when the family went shppping...
double layers, dboule standards etc
black japanes satin ..
kpirnts nott yet done but --- a bit like this
with first
11 x 14 "
james risen