The Print Shop: Rise Up! The Neverending Glen Kelburn Garden Party Kelburn Castle, Scotland 2019
A touring DIY t-shirt printing space. The public is invited to sit join a table, and through a collaborative writing exercise turn their climate anxiety into direct action by creating a slogan t-shirt. All t-shirts are 100% recycled post-consumer material and inks are water-based and solvent-free approved by the UK Soil Association. An Uz Arts project.
The T-Shirt Intervention is a public engagement project that looks at clothing as a medium for personal and political expression. This looks at how we dress as an intervention in public space and the creation of a discursive arena. The T-shirt serves as a means to articulate personal concerns, many of which are mutually shared amongst the community. A series of staged interventions allow public participation in a variety of formats.
The work os a platform to disclose personal narratives publicly, and show how each person’s clothing evidences their ideas and values. The creating of the t-shirts facilitates a DIY workshop mode where the participant gains added value to the work through having a political product made with their own hands.
A series of staged interventions allow public participation in a variety of formats:
The Print Shop: Rise Up! A pop-up shop, repurposed as the HQ of a mock eco-protest movement. Here, individual and groups come to develop slogans, debate topics to highlight, create t-shirts & posters, and work with the Lead Provocateurs / Artists. The Print Shop: Rise Up! exists as an art piece around social engagement, prompting curious passers-by to venture in, and mounting provocative displays with slogans.
Walking Statements: T-Teams with material created from the workshops in the HQ will develop a series of methods in which slogans and statements are added across single and multiple t-shirts. Each person leaves with thgeir t-shirt and a custom postcards with information about the statement, the project and the invitation to not only wear the shirt publicly but engage others in conversation on the topic.
Participating in The Slogan Project is not only be a fun mode of self-expression but also aids learning about how our identities are reflected in our clothing and what it means to the planet. The project avoids polarising existing issues amongst people, allowing for strong self-expression in an open platform, with an agreement to be able to disagree. We avoid clichés, creating polarities, fashion peacocking, vanity & sexualisation. Instead we want to show that a simple item of clothing like a t-shirt has powerful social impact and that participation in a large scale public art project can be as simple as what you were.
Everybody becomes a performer.
Listen to the podcast about climate change and death anxiety. Presented at Kelburn Castle during The Print Shop: Rise Up!
