World 224, Enactment i: report

This Enactment explored World 224, in which clothes and ornaments are living beings.

It was organised by Manuela Cadena, Santiago Colmenares, Mariana León, Estefania Mariño and Mariana Rojas, third-year undergraduate BA Design students in the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

It was one of a number of enactments that were created by students for a public event, Wearable Speculations, at Juanita Echeverri’s gallery in Bogotá.

The text guiding this Enactment:

With the lockdown resulting from the pandemic, nature once again took over the places that humanity had taken away from it in World 224. Vines, seeds, fungi, and other beings began to creep through windows and cracks in clothing stores, growing on both synthetic and natural textile surfaces.

Nature’s power acted swiftly, restoring the lost ecological balance on the planet. During this process, nature became an active agent within the fashion industry, participating in the clothes’ design.

This raised awareness among people, who began to understand the value and purpose of nature and to respect its role within our surroundings. Consequently, a process of adopting garments was established, with care systems and benefits for specific plants, allowing them to coexist with us in our daily lives.

In this enactment, visitors were invited to adopt an artifact, created to benefit the organisms living in the clothes, and to reflect on the experience.

For more details, see the group’s report (which includes a recipe to recreate the enactment for yourself):

The whole Wearable Speculations event was a great success, attracting a big audience to experience the fictional worlds. The students were proud of their achievements.

Here is a reflection from group member Manuela:

It is difficult to take distance from the extractivist dynamics that rule our relationship with nature. But to change our mindset and make us responsible for looking after a being, to take care of another life gave us a lot to think about. Adopting a live garment helps people realise the short life of our clothes and helps them think about caring for and keeping them longer.

This Enactment was devised by Manuela Cadena, Santiago Colmenares, Mariana León, Estefania Mariño and Mariana Rojas, based on a World contributed by the same group, using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the authors and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.

Photographs: Alejandro Barragan and Santiago Colmenares.