MODUS Hosts @ Fashion Space Gallery
October 31 2022 - January 20 2023

For the second iteration of MODUS Hosts; a space to assemble, connect and nurture modes of practice in the expanded field, we brought together an international collective of practitioners working at and beyond the traditional boundaries of fashion, creating dialogue between their methods and procedures. With an emphasis on process rather than outcome, the exhibition was an invitation to encounter fashion as a verb through a community of practice engaging in action, disruption, conversation and care.

MODUS Hosts included contributions by:
Colectivo Malvestidas (CL) @colectivo_malvestidas
Ellen Sampson (UK) @ellensampson
Kasia Gorniak / talking through our bodies (AU/FI) @talkingthroughourbodies
Laura Gardner (AU) and Femke de Vries (NL)
@laurasgardner @fmkdvrs
Muslin Brothers (IL/BE) @muslinbros
Nakako Hayashi / here and there (JP) @nakakobooks
Sue Tompkins (UK) @suebbbb2003
Tenant of Culture (UK/NL) @tenantofculture
The Community (FR) @thecommunityparis
And an intervention by Floriane Misslin (FR/UK) @floriane_misslin

The exhibition was accompanied by a series of events:

1/12/22: Talking on Shirts - a workshop with Kasia Gorniak

9/12/22: Exploring fashion vocabulary through the development of the Fashion Paratext Dataset - a conversation with Laura Gardner and Femke de Vries

11/01/23: Queer Moods - A participatory mood board - a workshop with Floriane Misslin

20/01/23: Elements that fashion - stream of consciousness - a lecture performance by Muslin Brothers to mark the closing of MODUS Hosts.

MODUS Hosts: CAULFIELD—SRIKLAD
October 16 - December 19, 2021

MODUS Hosts is a series of collaborations that serve as an opportunity to showcase the methods and modes of production of practitioners exploring fashion in the expanded field. For the first iteration of MODUS Hosts, we were delighted to work with studio practice CAULFIELD—SRIKLAD to present Unfolding Inter-local Practice, an installation and online exchange during Dutch Design Week 2021 at Onomatopee Projects.

Unfolding Inter-local Practice is a collection of embodied expressions, illustrating an emerging design methodology, a process, a practice. The installation explores the cultural memory held within the garments inherited from a dual Thai-Irish family archive and examines the contrasting dressing practices associated with the tailored suit and the Theravada Buddhist robe. Through the embodied experience of dressing and undressing in these garments, this methodology engages the intimate process of thinking through materials. Drawing insights from folding, covering, layering, tying and wrapping, transforms the cultural memory associated with these garments into a space of cultural imagination. This is a present day inter-place* and provides a new starting point for design aimed at creating a sense of belonging and sense of inter-locality**.

*inter-place: a union and integration of multiple places that shape experience
** inter-local: the process of belonging, through the union and integration of local experience

CAULFIELD—SRIKLAD is a studio practice by brother and sister Daniel and Siranee Caulfield-Sriklad. With backgrounds in fashion design and communication, academia and industry, their practice is interdisciplinary. They understand the act of dressing as ritual and fabric and the body as interdependent. They design for the body as a system of possible actions, through an awareness of being, becoming and belonging, thus creating conditions of possibility and embodied consciousness.

MODUS: Conversations
21, 22 and 23 October 2020

MODUS: Conversations was a series of three panel discussions bringing researchers and practitioners together to forge new thinking around the expanded field of fashion practice. Each of the panel discussions was formulated around a shared verb(s) from the MODUS glossary as a way to begin the conversation.

Conversation #1: EMBODYING / QUESTIONING
with Jay McCauley Bowstead, Chet Julius Bugter and Floriane Misslin

Conversation #2: INHABITING
with Jude Barber, Emma Hoette and Dr. Sara Chong Kwan

Conversation #3: DECENTERING
with Dr. Lauren Downing Peters and Dr. Azadeh Fatehrad

MODUS: Annotated
October 19, 2019 - January 26, 2020

The first MODUS publication takes a glossary of practices as its central thread - a lexicon of habits, methods, rules, techniques, repetitions and actions. Into this glossary four essays are woven revealing questions as well as suggesting approaches or perspectives that expanded fashion practices might offer. The introduction proposes: This document should be read as a live provocation rather than a definitive explanation. We invite you to engage with it as a working model: add notes in the spaces, highlight and draw connections between ideas. It is a blueprint for new ways of thinking, being and doing fashion that forms the foundation of the MODUS project.

In October 2018, one year on from the launch of MODUS, we invited a selection of practitioners to do exactly this; reflect on the project through the lens of their own approaches and expertise. This series of annotated publications was on display at Onomatopee during Dutch Design Week .

MODUS: In Residence / Publication Launch
5 - 12 and 20-28 October 2018

MODUS was in residence with an open studio at Onomatopee throughout October 2018 and during Dutch Design Week 20-28/10/2018. During this time Ruby, Caroline and Roland worked on compiling and designing the publication in-situ enabling conversations and contributions to the glossary by visitors throughout the process. The residency concluded with a joint book launch: MODUS and One-to-One Reader with an in conversation event during which Elisa van Joolen, Caroline Stevenson and Ruby Hoette discussed approaches to experimental and expanded fashion practice.