Form-defining systems of reverse crafting

Abstract: Textile-form as dress is often synonymous with the form-defining system of cut and assemble, and as such, cut and assemble can be argued as that which defines as well as restrains this discipline. The following work is an inquiry that aims to investigate alternative methods of form-thinking and manufacturing, and their aesthetic consequences for dress. This practice-led venture, explores other imaginaries both as initial point of departure and final objective. As such, the work strives to incrementally increase understanding of the accumulated traces that inform processes of forming and thus come to actively affect the structuring processes and outcomes of an experimental system that seeks form-defining systems as other realities, for, and of dress as textile-form. The context is the interdependent relationship of cut and assemble as a method for artistic practice and a system for manufacturing dress. Historically developed as a method and a craft practice for bespoke, on-demand production, cut and assemble is regarded by many as unsuited for industrial manufacturing. Driven by a high turnaround neo-capitalist system, its manufacturing industry is repeatedly described as unsustain-able, both in regards to environmental and social challenges. However, while there is an increasing search for alternatives, these commonly seek to maintain the linear processes of cut and assemble. Alternative proposals seldom take into consideration that systems of manufacturing rely on the methods of conception and vice versa, and that both entities need to be speculated dependently and in tandem. Therefore, this research explores processes of transposition through and within other imaginaries into form-defining systems for textile-form. It speculates the aesthetic conse-quences of dress through material and immaterial investigations neither commencing nor ending with the cut and assembly of mass-manufactured, roll-based textile. As such, the work explores the informing of textile-form through actual and virtual media and material inherently different to those of cut and assemble. This allows the implementation of tools and apparatuses generally not used within systems of dress, and investigates as well as integrates these through an elastic and experimental process, rather than as add-ons to a closed circuit of current practice. The work further elaborates on the theory of reverse crafting as a way of using other realities to facilitate alternative form-defining systems of dress, in a future where craft knowledge is foremost required at the initial stages of interpreting and developing that which is to be conceived rather than at the stage of manufacturing.