21, 22, 23/10/2020 > Symposium – MODUS: Conversations in collaboration with Caroline Stevenson at Onomatopee Projects during Dutch Design Week 2020, Online
31/01/2020 - 26/03/2020 > Exhibition – Fashion Constellations: blueprints towards expanding fashion practice, a teaching project with Katherine May at Constance Howard Gallery London, UK
22/10/2019 > Symposium – The Politics of Practice-based Fashion Research organised by the Austrian Center for Fashion Research in collaboration with MAK in Vienna, Austria
19/10/2019 - 27/10/2019 > Exhibition – MODUS: Annotated in collaboration with Caroline Stevenson and Roland Brauchli at Onomatopee Projects during Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven, NL
04/03/2019 – 30/03/2019 > Exhibition – Patternmapping curated by The Community in residence at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, UK
25/10/2018 - 31/12/2018 > Exhibition and Book Launch – MODUS in collaboration with Caroline Stevenson and Roland Brauchli at Onomatopee Projects during Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven, NL
16/06/2018 – 30/06/2018 > Exhibition – Conversation Pieces curated with Caroline Stevenson at Tenderbooks, London, UK
26/01/2018 – 10/03/2018 > Exhibition – Omega Workshop: An Experiment in Counter-Fashion curated by Rational Dress Society with work by Nick Cave, Sky Cubacub, Frau Fiber, Friends of Light, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, Ruby Hoette, KOVR, Fawn Krieger, Jennifer Moon, Marloes ten Bhömer, Marisa Williamson and Andrea Zittel. Hosted by EFA Project Space, NYC
MODUS is a platform to explore and support expanded fashion practices creating an international network of practitioners and bridging theory and practice in fashion. The central thread of the project is a glossary of verbs or ‘modes of practice’. This serves as a starting point for all MODUS initiatives including the first MODUS publication (2018) as well as various events and exhibitions during Dutch Design Week (MODUS in residence 2018, MODUS: Annotated 2019, MODUS: Conversations 2020).
In August 2020 the MODUS online network was launched inviting practitioners to contribute their work by linking it to verbs from the glossary. As it grows the network will connect and support the community of practice that is collectively pushing the boundaries of the field to explore how it links people, places and processes and thus is woven into broader social, cultural, political and economic flows of value and meaning. By gathering these critical and experimental approaches to fashion production and presentation in one shared database MODUS aims to support diverse modes of operating as belonging to fashion, reclaiming the word and connecting the people that are reinventing the field. The platform aims to facilitate ongoing conversations between the practitioners working in this expanded field and writers/theorists from a range of disciplines from cultural and critical theory to politics and economics to formulate alternate systems of value and nurture expanded ways of thinking, doing and being fashion. MODUS is initiated and led by Ruby Hoette and Caroline Stevenson through Onomatopee Projects and in collaboration with Roland Brauchli.What if fashion were a discussion, an exchange, a negotiation or even a heart to heart? And what if conversation were a mode of production? Are there new perspectives this might this reveal in terms of materials, processes and value?
Conversation Pieces is an on-going research project that investigates the potential of garments as discursive objects and dress practices as dialogues. The project employs tools and techniques that are related to both text (highlighting) and textile (unpicking) to generate perspectives on fashion practice that are embedded in everyday dress practices and associated language.For the publication and ongoing project Dictionary Dressings: Re-reading clothing definitions towards alternative fashion perspectives (2016) by Femke de Vries Conversation Pieces #1 explores the relationship between the sleeve and the scarf using their definitions, functions and everyday adaptations as mechanisms to reinterpret. The publication was launched with an exhibition at Onomatopee during Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven in October 2016. Editions of the project have been presented at Everyone and Everything as Material Conference hosted by The Swedish School of Textiles and RMIT, Borås, Sweden (2017) and Fashion Colloquium: Searching for the New Luxury, ArtEZ Arnhem, NL (2018) as well as The Community: offline, Paris and Tenderbooks, London, UK (2018)
Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Poland 2015
This project was conceived and organised in collaboration with Pascale Gatzen and Cathy Leibowitz and made possible by all those who participated.
This Red Door and Textile Arts Center, NYC 2013