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"Time is what stops everything from happening at once"
It is now 1.45am on Wednesday in Brighton UK, and this website opens later today between 10am-8pm. The first places in the world to already reach 10am and have access are New Zealand, Australia & Japan, and the last places on earth to reach 8pm and get to see it will be Alaska & West Coast USA. Good morning and good night wherever you may be, enjoy the read...
Sword of Damocles
Cutting at the RCA
Subtraction Cutting Masterclass at the Royal College of Art, London UK. Spent a lovely day in the 7th floor Drawing Studio projecting video, sketching and waxing lyrical about leaps of faith from inspiration to reality, from 2D to 3D, and from the mind-to-hand-to-body. Featured work by MA Mixed Media Textiles Students: Eva Malschaert, Alice Richardson, Emma Lundgren, Marie Parsons, Jungeun Lee, Kitty Joseph and Lene Byberg.
<Wednesday, 21st October 2009>
Sub-Cutting at Northampton University, UK
Chrometophobia
" Yes I want society to make money, to be prosperous, rich & wonderful,
But not if it squeezes me out towards the margins,
Into its debt, into something I should fear questioning,
Because my hard earned success can always be taken away from me if I don’t behave.
We should not be in awe of the society we live in,
we should not worship it
and be held beneath it’s heavens.
We should sometimes, and whenever we must,
Stand up to it, advance it,
make sure it actually survives the party,
without tripping over
and believing it’s own hype and bullshit."
- Julian Roberts, Pecha Kucha, ICA Gallery, 26th April 2006.
Born 1971. The £Pound is No Older Than i Am.
Microphobia
Why fear us.
Animals and creatures aren’t scared of humans.
They’re intrigued by them.
They want to get closer to them, camp nearby, cross their floor, follow their route, sample their food, get to know their lifestyle, become part of their habits, benefit from their routines, live their lifestyle, fly round their moons, wake up to their morning, and come out when their halogen sun extinguishes, like a burnt match, and we are finally safe, we can relax, we can come out of hiding, whisper then talk, even laugh, and run around, we can feel free, we can explore, we can burn off some calories and fall happily into exhaustion, and snooze in the gentle darkness, and in the distance we hear you snore, a distant slow thunder, miles from home, but a storm brewing, counting your breaths, a mile away for every seconds exhale, between the lightning of every sharp forked intake, we watch them with our senses, they buzz for us, fascinate us, make us wonder what they are, what they think, where they are going.
What do theses humans want? What life is this that smells so sweet, that is flesh, and blood, and sweat, and warm fluid air, oozing moisture, wet with saliva, a mountain of meat, refreshments, nutrition, life, calories, energy, a generator, pumping fuel, growing then receding with each revolution of its engine, this heroic heart, adrenalin sparking off each cell as their chemistry and oils ignite, fed by dreams and imagination, a mental world of pictures and puzzles, memories& orders, flowing in and out of sleep with each other, day after night, consciousness after unconsciousness, this lucid mix of the two coexisting, love and hate, passion and apathy, intrigue and fear, all overwhelming and underwhelming their senses, their feelers, the reality they see, the everyday lives of action and movement and going here, going there, doing this, doing that, a billion at once in a storm of activity, crammed together in transport, unleashed into tall tubed buildings, worrying about coffee breaks, and what they’re going to eat for lunch.
The flipside of their dreams just don’t seep in, they forget them in the daylight, they are scared of their dreams, dismiss them, make them comic, ridicule them, call them rude words like ‘art’, but at night time in the dark they are fantasizing and flipping through their history and their icons, and feeling horny in their imagination, like they have done enough, like they can celebrate their days work, and feel safe enough to relax, to snooze, to unwind, to be at peace, to intoxicate themselves with drugs and alcohol, sweet poisons that let them become that person they wish they were, the one in their heads, the one they wanted to be at school, when they were a child, when the sun shone, and nothing mattered but tea time, when you could wish for and receive your dreams handed to you, wrapped in shiny paper, disguised in fairytales, in its own beautiful religion, that time in your life when you felt protected and wide eyed enough to want to look for fun, to find adventure in the everyday, the cupboards and draws, the windowsills and downstairs, the hallway between the bedrooms, the creek of each floor board, the distance jump between the mats, long medium or short, the gardens hideouts, the stones and earth, our forefathers and the plants, the animals and creatures underneath everything, the cuts and scratches, the falls and tumbles, the trees, the branches, the climbing, the swinging from branch to branch, finding the next foothold, risking that leap to get higher, up to the sky, these projections flicker through the human mind like flames, sparking ignition, shutting down the guard, drawing them into restfulness in the guise of their true selves, their inner child, imagination, a fluid wave of nostalgia bristling through them, oozing through their veins, making them want to live, to have to live internally, physiologically, to live whether they like it or not, a death sentence of life, sucking in, spewing out, keeping time, rhythm, sync, processor speed, wave, pulse, bomb, hfff, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeer, bomb, hfff, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeer, slow and constant like a breakbeat, so alive their bodies pronounce their aliveness at volume, audible from a distance, lost within their own mortal rhythm, and that is what a human is like, that’s what we find so engaging, it’s this big huge thing that is incredible, too good to be true, a new world of possibilities, and we want to either be saved by them or eat them to the bone, they’re the brightest thing we’ve ever seen, and there’s something about them that suggests better times, maybe their example could lead us somewhere, so we’ll follow, and if they trip we’ll bite them, and if they fall it’s dinner time, but let’s see what happens, so we get in their bed, sample their leftovers, let them bring food to us, feed off their warmth, their salt, their warm updraft of exhaled air and body heat, and d’you think we’d be so stupid as to get caught? Without first realizing and weighing up the dangers? Of course we get caught, that’s inevitable, there are so many more of us than you humans, we are everywhere, it is you who are in herds, gripped by your fears, huddling in concrete fortresses, we are free, we go where we want, we occupy nature, the nocturnal, the mystical, the inbetweens, the oceans, the grey areas, the green belts, the gardens, the gutters, the corridors, the ledges on the skirting boards, the space between your sheets, the creases between your clothes, the wrinkles of your skin, the space between your pores, we are in your blood, we are bacteria, we are viral, we are your malfunction, we battle your red blood cells ceaselessly, and always win eventually, we are part of you, we are more than you, we disperse you.
And you fear us.
You this huge great big thing that can destroy entire countries, and circumnavigate the entire world by air, sea & land, and travel into space to the moon and back, and to the bottom of the deepest known ocean, you fear us, these tiny little things, you scorn our microscopic size, our intrusion into your orderliness, our reminder that you are animal, that you are like us, unclean, untidy, foraging for food and opportunity.
You see us and want us dead, by spray or trap, rolled up magazine, or ultra violet insectocution.
Animal and creatures are not part of your lifestyle, your daytime, your conscience, they remind you of the darkness, of your history, your generations past, and everything you have struggled beyond, that you have outlived and survived, that you have battled to overcome, to dominate, to eradicate, to tidy away, to remove from your list of known problems, cured and eliminated by antibiotics.
But your medicine stimulates us, stimulates our nerve endings, gets us all defensive and fractious, makes us want to survive and regroup, to come back for more, to see what it is that you are protecting, to see if you’re hard enough to win the war rather than just some small battle, whether you can play the long game, keep your defences up, watch your back, hear our quiet shoes coming for you, from behind, in the darkness, when you least expect it, not quite on the right foot to make the detour, make that defensive move, relive those Bruce Lee fighting sequences in your head, but when it comes, it’ll come from nowhere and you’ll kick yourself for not foreseeing it, losing your street cred, allowing yourself to become the victim, to feel yourself be beaten and humiliated, to be overcome by something greater than yourself.
Your own flesh and blood, hunting you, staking you out, setting you traps, seeing how easily you fall into them, seeking out your habits and weaknesses.
Animals are just like you, but better at living and staying alive.
We get you in the end and we love you.
You eat us. We eat you.
It’s all give and take.
We’re everywhere and everything, just the same chemicals and energy that you are, reacting with you, rotating in your orbit, rotating within ours.
Words by Julian Roberts
The early morning commute, Hove - London, Autumn 2009.
<Wednesday, 14th October 2009>
Hand Memory
So the task facing me is to cut patterns purely by eye and hand, with no numerical measurements, rulers or straight lines.
In fact no patterns at all.
The pattern is purely in the mind:
Escape the grid completely.
Bullet-points for an imaginary conference speech.
What benefit is there to a system of cutting that results in unpredictable forms & shapes?
..which favours unmeasured & freehand drawn lines?
..which encourages inacuracy?
..which confuses perspectives & loosens up geometric thinking?
Where does such a technique go when released by a master to become a novelty plaything of an enthusiast or novice?
..encouraging DIY, self-learning, education outside of academia.
What state am i left in in its absence? What ambitions do i harbour? Who do i want to connect with & be?
The battle for ideas can easily look like shadow boxing,
..demons & spooks, personal fears and failures.
A lot of people are not aware there is anything really worth fighting for: it's unattractive.
When quiet people turn up the volume & choose to fight,
..they need to remember to take their audience WITH THEM.
So my audience extends and qualifies my techniques.
..They test pilot & trial my cutting system, bringing new personality to it.
Love of patterns to a cutting fanatic, is like love of maps to a collector.
Since childhood i have loved cross-sections and diagrams, periodic tables, family trees, lineage and dominoes.
The territory a garment pattern represents, often does not exist before it is drafted/mapped-out,
..The three dimensional landscape is created by the two dimensional,
..by hazarding a guess, with every line, expedition, question mark, puzzle, step, leap of faith, human canonball flight path,
..the pattern comes to life beneath the hand,
..following the curiosity of the minds eye,
..defining & extending territory, space &fabric form,
.. bringing the garment to life: in imagination first, hotly pursued by reality.
Hazarding guesses, trial & error, learning by mistakes: Being right to be wrong.
Escaping the rigidity of childhood geometry:
..a square block only ever fitting through a square hole, a glove always resembling a hand, the platonic solids dominating conceptions of shape,
..thinking only in straight measured lines, thinking hard shapes, solid like wood, metal or stone,
..instead you need to think more fluidly: fabric not concrete, encourage a more tactile approach to geometry.
It's important to share the inspiration, to be unpossessive, to reveal the magic tricks, to demystify, to be open to collaboration.
You need to pass on the excitement & playfulness of craft / engineering techniques,
..not the rigid straight jacket of traditions,
..the fire, not the ashes/cobwebs.
Traditional techniques are important to study, there is beauty in rediscovery, but it must not prevent or hinder progression.
You need to encourage people to make mistakes, as well as to make good or perfect.
..to not be scared to try things out which might go wrong, to learn from their own mistakes,
..to go off the beaten track, to trespass into areas outside their experience or specialism,
..to exercise their bodies & minds in the performance of making,
..to make themselves the measure,
..to measure by eye, by hand, in relation to oneself, to incorporate ones own physical values into the garment pattern,
..to escape the bondage of rulers & measures & sizing scales & tools, and instead find new ones,
..to subvert traditional techniques in pursuit of new methodologies,
..to not be frightened by right-thinking experts, critics, cynics, health&safety rules®ulations,
..to persevere, and be relentlessly optimistic.
Assessment can impede creativity. It can be difficult to take real risks when you are being marked and qualified at every step.
Imagination is faster than technology.
New machines, new ways of engineering, constructing and manufacturing, all require fantasy & invention.
..Art and science collide.
'Necessity is the mother of all invention'.
The brief is just the starting point,
..the minimum requirements necessary to pass the assessment criteria.
The brief must always be surpassed.
Academia splits hairs, dividing subjects along ever more fragmented lines in order to sell its courses.
..creativity and business become separated,
..art and science a different currency, rather than two sides of the same coin.
Fashion becomes separated from textiles, from design promotion & marketing, womenswear dissected from menswear.
But they are all joined: fashion & architecture, textiles & mathematics, art & music & economics, mind/body/space.
What would life be teaching you if formal education wasn't ?
Trespass into other subjects & specialisms. Make parallels. Share research findings.
Escape the limitations of formal education and schooled thought.
A new decade & economy unfolds.
Change comes whether you voted for it or not.
Seek out new currencies, new values, new trading routes, new retail avenues, new ways of showing & presenting garments,
..of capturing the imagination and making people want to make things THEMSELVES.
People easily forget that things are made by hand, that products are designed & manufactured by people.
..manufacture can become remote & unethical when hidden from view, confined to backrooms or overseas sweatshops.
Bring it home. Bring it centre stage. Make it evident. Bring it to the classroom.
Set up workshops & apprenticeships. Become hobbyist & fanatic.
Break down the hierarchical structure of the design/manufacture team: the designer--->cutter--->machinist--->student intern food chain.
Don't over-complicate the subject. Cutting isn't hard, designing isn't complicated. Fashion Designers are not geniuses.
Burst the ego bubbles & dispell the media myths: the hype & bullshit.
Get your hands dirty, put in some hard graft & be playful,
..be experimental in garment making, creative in selling, unconventional in presentation & marketing.
Capture the imagination of a new decade, a new generation, a new economy,
Mining craft & technical skills in an ethical & sustainable way.
London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, Berlin, Glasgow, Brighton... get off the beaten paths, escape the maddening crowds.
Make a dressing up box full of garment ideas for you & your friends to wear and roleplay,
honour your own personal heroes, icons & celebrities, keep it local, keep it real, down to earth,
..fresh out of the workshop, well crafted, clever & ingenious,
..show people how things are made, make manufacture & construction visible, at the forefront, a brand quality,
..reveal your magic tricks, share inspiration & skills, pass on the buzz & excitement of making to your audience.
If you are going to cut a pattern for a garment, you might as well make a song & dance about it.
Ocean Beach San Francisco USA, with Sandra Ericson from the Center for Pattern Design
me on Ocean Beach vid clip: http://julianand.blip.tv/file/2735958/
The airplane wing looks cold and smooth like concrete,
i'd love to climb out and walk on it,
lie in the cloudless sunshine,
but we're traveling at 551mph parallel with Reykjavik,
and i'm not allowed out.
Had a great time in San Sebastián Spain, cutting for the MID-E arts festival at the Arteleku Gallery. Spent two days making Sub-Cut garments with a lovely creative group, who had traveled from all over Spain, and as far afield as Italy & Sweden to hear me talk. The finale was a big dressing up session in a mirrored dance studio in front of TV cameras.
The only thing i can ever do to change the world is to demonstrate new ideas.
for as long as there are new ways of thinking, doing & making things there is the possibility of change.
It is not the performance of new ideas that is important, but their preservation.
You have to find a way of producing things in a new way
that might inspire future generations to believe & hope that things might be different.
This might involve engineering their misinterpretation,
it might involve a refusal to present things at-all,
or it might involve concealing ideas in some way so that they become preserved.
Our audience is not solely contemporary, and we are not at the zenith of civilization:
We are permitted as designers & artists to address the future,
and to anticipate unknown audiences,
to factor in the probability that we are before our time,
that we might become easily lost amongst our contempories,
forgoten and later rediscovered.
Loss shouldn't disuade us from pursuing new ideas & ways of making.
It is not the the traditions of creativity we need to uphold, but the future of new ideas.
It is a very real certainty that a great deal of creative products & ideas will be destroyed &
eroded by our tendency towards ephemeral media formats, and virtual presentation.
Future archaeology might not be able to unravel the ideas so deeply encoded
in our choice of media formats....
a great deal has already been lost to the magnetic tape, cinefilm and vinyl record,
more is lost to the CD & video cassette,
and an entire culture of ideas & images could be lost in the passing of the internet & digital age.
The deeper we encode ideas within the medium of presentation,
the less future generations will know about our ideas & our motivation to innovate new thoughts.
Change is not continuous,
it requires effort & motivation & an awareness of time passing, to keep the dream of it alive.
"Love your work - if it were in a bin on fire." - Bollo
So what DID i like from London Fashion Week - Spring/Summer 2010 ?
Well not a lot ! My favorite show was the 'BLOW Presents' show at the Royal Festival Hall, featuring the work of Chalie Le Mindu & Iris van Herpen.
I used to be the 'Creative Director' of Blow PR, which was more of an honourary title rather than job description, as my main role was designing/coding their website & designing flyer graphics in return for free PR for my unprofitable fashion labels. Michael Salac who runs the agency had decided to bring together a number of new designers to showcase their work back-to-back in one show, and i rather liked this fast paced conveyor-belt format. It reminded me of the no-budget SuperSuper Show i directed a few seasons ago, London needs these kind of new talent springboard events. I get quite bored watching catwalk shows frontstage, witnessing all the editors & slebs become shiny & anxious under the spotlights, so i instead took refuge backstage, photographing all the action. I then found a nice spot in between both front & back stages where i could watch the show unfold from twin perspectives, like a meniscus or plumb line. Charlie Le Mindu's show was all about mad hairy hats & wig-dresses, with the exception of an Eiffel Tower balanced precariously on the long latex body of Liz Bujoreanu. Iris Van Herpen's show was really beautiful. Lots of intricate surface detail, trists & turns. She stood in line quietly backstage at the end of a long line of models without PR/PA's fussing around her, waiting to go out to take her bow. She then went out, took the bow, came back backstage and not one person wished her well or congratulated her during the whole time. I rather admired her for politely getting on with the job without any pretention or fanfare, especially as she is so talented. It's the quiet ones you have to watch!
Backstage photography by Julian Roberts 2009.
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All garments, video, graphics, websites and text are copyrighted to Julian Roberts (c) 2009. A lot of the images assembled above came from Google or somewhere, and are the copyright of their original owner. But their assembly together is very much my own doing, it's difficult to say really where creative ownership begins & ends, i'm certainly not averse to creative trespass. So no reproduction without permission, unless you're feeling subversive, punk.