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SOFTWEAR
[Nr.]
Title
Type
⤢ a directory that gathers, stacks and links practices that work with, through and beyond (digital) fashion […]
LATEST UPDATE 05.09.2024
Gathered here are places and spaces that participate in and shape marginal online environments and function as communities by hosting workshops, exhibitions, public programmes, symposia, residencies and other initiatives that bring together creatives and their practices. The environments listed have their own creative ecologies - they are not solely focused on (digital) fashion, but illustrate everything that surrounds it.
✼ Digital
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Platform, Public programme
DESCRIPTION
“Originating with the city’s counterculture and free spaces, Amsterdam Alternative stands for collective actionand radical political debate, for the sake of a desirable future for the many, not the few. In 2015 we started this trajectory by publishing a joint newspaper and website.
Amsterdam Alternative does not rely on one doctrine, slogan or statement. Different perspectives, ideas and backgrounds exist side by side, without the need to mold them into one homogeneous party line. We are not looking for a clear cut definition of ‘the alternative,’ but fight for a future urban culture that is in line with the open, emancipative aspects of Amsterdam’s heritage as a free city. We are a platform for political movements and activists looking for effective tools against the city’s perpetual devastation by the rich and powerful.”
☇ Physical
Boston, United States
Research institute
Digital
DESCRIPTION
“The Future Sketches group explores software as a medium for art and design, as well as how toolkits and pedagogical approaches can help inform a new generation of computational craft. In our work and courses we focus on computational sketches, often engaging with the past, as a way of suggesting different possible futures. In addition, we are focused on tools for creative coding, both in tools that currently exist and designing, building, and supporting new tools for computational artistic expression. Today's tools help shape tomorrow’s art. Current research explores generative form, machine learning, and augmented reality with a specific focus on how we can understand the essence of these technologies and use them in unexpected and poetic ways.”
✼ Digital
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Platform, Public programme
DESCRIPTION
“Hackers & Designers is a non-profit workshop initiative organizing activities at the intersection of technology, design and art. By creating shared moments of hands-on learning H&D stimulates collaboration across disciplines, technological literacy, and different levels of expertise.”
⥄ Hybrid
New York, United States
DESCRIPTION
“Index provides space for the exchange of knowledge and tools. We nurture trust within the creative community through generosity and abundance of ideas and care.
We are a community of designers, poets, technologists, aesthetes, joke tellers, readers, eaters, artists, commies, freaks, and friends. What unifies us is our belief that creativity isn’t diminished when shared — that generosity and care are integral to our creative practices.
Founded during the pandemic, Index is a space where the public can come and teach, learn, converse and share. We produce digital and occasionally physical programs that bring people together to learn about things like creative coding, architecture, and animation — as well as programs that bring people together simply for the sake of being together, like our collective readings and group meditations.”✼ Digital
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Platform, Research institute
Digital Culture, Research
DESCRIPTION
“The Institute of Network Cultures (INC) analyzes and shapes the terrain of network cultures through events, publications, and online dialogue. Our projects evolve around urgent publishing, alternative revenue models, critical design and making, digital counter culture and much more.
The INC was founded in 2004 by Geert Lovink, following his appointment within the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. A key focus is the establishment of sustainable research networks. Emerging critical topics are identified and shaped in a practical sense. Interdisciplinary in character, the INC brings together researchers, artists, activists, programmers, designers, and students and teachers.”
⥄ Hybrid
Utrecht, Netherlands
Symposium, Public programme
Digital
DESCRIPTION
“How do recent technological developments empower makers to generate new creative avenues? How is the creative coding landscape going to evolve in the coming few years? These questions will be explored during the creative coding symposium ITERATIONS. With a focus on inclusivity, we invited an international group of makers from different disciplines to talk about how they use code as a creative medium. In the form of presentations, interactive sessions, and workshops we will discuss the themes: machine learning, computational craft, and creative education.”
✼ Digital
London, United Kingdom
DESCRIPTION
“MODUS provides a platform to connect and celebrate these diverse and radical ways of 'doing' fashion. The central thread is a glossary of verbs - a growing lexicon of habits, methods, techniques, repetitions and actions - that together, begin to sketch out a shared language for expanded fashion practice. The project takes various forms from publications to events, exhibitions and workshops – all with the aim of building an international network that represents and supports this community of expanded fashion practitioners. MODUS facilitates conversations between the practitioners working in the expanded field and writers/theorists from a range of disciplines including sociology, cultural and critical theory, politics and economics to encourage overlaps between theory and practice in fashion and formulate new perspectives on and experiments in fashion.
MODUS is led by Ruby Hoette and Caroline Stevenson in collaboration with Roland Brauchli and Floriane Misslin (research assistant)”
☇ Physical
New York, United States
Incubator
DESCRIPTION
“”
As the first museum-led cultural incubator, NEW INC was conceived of as a not-for-profit platform for furthering the New Museum’s ongoing commitment to new art and new ideas. Now in Year 9, NEW INC’s membership model continues to support a diverse range of creative practitioners with a values-driven program and safe space for gathering and developing new creative projects and businesses. In 2020, NEW INC launched ONX Studio, an XR accelerator for artists, in partnership with the Onassis Foundation. NEW INC was cofounded by New Museum’s Toby Devan Lewis Director, Lisa Phillips and Deputy Director, Karen Wong in 2014.
⥄ Hybrid
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Platform, Research institute
Digital
DESCRIPTION
“A creative studio that works with 3D and creative technologies, using their love of technology and design to build stories for a modern audience. Together with a network of collaborators and clients around the world. Post Neon creates, directs, animates and designs in order to take their audience on a trip through physical and digital realities.”
⥄ Hybrid
New York, United States
Museum
DESCRIPTION
“Rhizome champions born-digital art and culture through commissions, exhibitions, scholarship, and digital preservation. Founded by artist Mark Tribe as an email discussion list including some of the first artists to work online, Rhizome has played an integral role in the history of contemporary art engaged with digital technologies and the internet.
Since 2003, Rhizome has been an affiliate in residence at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a leading destination for new art and new ideas. Together, New Museum, Rhizome, and NEW INC, the first museum-led incubator founded by New Museum in 2014, explore the future of contemporary art and technology.”
✼ Digital
Public programme
DESCRIPTION
“The Toolkit for the Inbetween is a how-to knowledge base offering tools, frameworks, and inspiration for designing a successful hybrid experience where online and on-site audiences come together. The toolkit provides an overview of existing, privacy-friendly platforms and tools for creating hybrid experiences. It also offers practical tips and a vocabulary on how these tools can contribute to an audience's experience. The toolkit is born out of extensive research into hybrid experiences and their dynamic lineage of experimentation undertaken in the art and cultural sector.
The Toolkit for the Inbetween is a partnership between The Hmm, affect lab, and MU. We work together with various location partners including STRP, Tetem, Framer Framed, Impakt, and Het Nieuwe Instituut for our hybrid experiments. The beta release for the toolkit is planned for the end of 2022. Keep an eye on this website or our socials to join one of our hybrid experiments and events.”
⥄ Hybrid
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Platform, Public programme
Digital, Feminist, Research
DESCRIPTION
“varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam) is a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology. As varia members, we maintain and facilitate a collective infrastructure from which we generate questions, opinions, modifications, help and action. We work with free software, organise events and collaborate in different constellations. varia figures things out as they go, tries to keep notes, is multilingual, has open hours and can be contacted at info[@]varia.zone.”
⥄ Hybrid
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Platform, Public programme
Critical Fashion
DESCRIPTION
“
Warehouse is an Amsterdam-based fashion platform that aims to create space for explorative, critical and alternative approaches to fashion that move beyond industrial commercial fashion and treating garments as commodities. Warehouse is a collaborative effort by Anouk Beckers, Chet Bugter (2019-2022), Elisa van Joolen, Hanka van der Voet, Femke de Vries, Chinouk Filique de Miranda for the podcast and Zuzana Kostelanská for the graphic
”✼ Digital
Arnhem, Netherlands
Platform, Research institute, Public programme
DESCRIPTION
“The Hmm is a platform for internet cultures, founded by Evelyn Austin and Lilian Stolk in 2016. We’re based in Amsterdam and there are plenty of ways to get involved.”
⥄ Hybrid
Research Institute
Digital Culture
DESCRIPTION
“Critical Infrastructure and Image Politics is a research group dedicated to investigating the politics of contemporary digital and visual cultures at the intersection of media art and critical theory. We foreground transdisciplinary and practice-based methodologies of artistic and activist-led research in media and technocultures with specific interests in material infrastructures, critical posthumanities, algorithmic visual cultures, feminist and decolonial technocultures, and media ecologies.”
☇ Physical
The Hague, Netherlands
Public programme
Fashion, Visual Arts
DESCRIPTION
“As a collective of four Dutch fashion designers, Anouk van Klaveren, Christa van der Meer, Dewi Bekker and Gino Anthonisse are known for their unconventional approach, creating interdisciplinary and experimental projects that challenge traditional fashion norms. Das Leben am Haverkamp aims to collectively explore fashion’s absurd, magical and seductive nature, by opening up their studio for makers, thinkers and a curious audience. Every three months they invite a guest to join the collective as an artist in residence. By creating exhibitions, lectures, performances, workshops or screenings, they share their vision. Through the lens of fashion each of them addresses contemporary issues, they cast a philosophical or critical perspective on identity politics, hypercapitalism and luxury.”
⥄ Hybrid
Aarhus, Denmark
Research Institute
Digital Culture
DESCRIPTION
“Digital Aesthetics Research Center (DARC) is based at The School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, and functions as a shared intellectual resource that identifies, analyses, and mediates current research and practices in art and digital culture.
The centre builds on a broad understanding of ‘digital aesthetics’: we are interested in how to read, write, see, visualize, hear, compose, create, and imagine with media and technologies – from the archaeologies of media and computational culture to the most recent techniques of AI and data.”
✼ Digital
Platform, Public programme
Digital Culture, Feminist, Research
DESCRIPTION
“Futuress is a hybrid between a learning community and a publishing platform. Our mission is to radically democratize design education and amplify marginalized voices. Through various free public programs, we problematize the role of design and foster critical thinking. Our work is literally for the future: we bring people together and support our community to craft their own narratives.”
⥄ Hybrid
Arnhem, Netherlands
Platform, Public programme
Feminism, Publishing
DESCRIPTION
“A publishing collective that aims to foster accessibility and gatherings.”
⥄ Hybrid
New York, USA
Platform, Public programme
Digital, Research
DESCRIPTION
“The School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) is an experimental school in New York founded in 2013. Our school supports interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It is a place for unlearning and learning.
Sfpc is a platform for people who are Black, Indigenous, of color, trans, gender non-conforming, queer, disabled, survivors, living with and/or from low-income backgrounds, and oppressed to feel empowered that their ideas are important, necessary and central.”
⥄ Hybrid
Platform, Public programme
Digital Culture, Visual Arts
DESCRIPTION
“Softer is a network committed to rewrite the narrative that tech is hard. We are a work-in-progress platform built on a feminist consciousness. We believe that softer values, such as care, empathy, community, collaboration and multiplicity is the path towards equal opportunities to learn and practice digital art and design. As an inclusive network, we aim to reveal and express multiple perspectives and facilitate nuanced learning experiences. We work through various digital and physical formats and facilitate tutorials, live streams, virtual exhibitions and residencies at our studio space in Copenhagen. We observe digital cultures through an ever critical lens with the aim of revealing and expressing multiple perspectives and shape a softer direction for digital futures.”
✼ Digital
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Platform
Multidisciplinary Arts
DESCRIPTION
“The Creative Industries Fund NL is the national cultural fund for design, architecture and digital culture. We finance innovative design projects of makers and cultural institutions in the creative industry. Many of these projects are interdisciplinary.”
✼ Digital
Platform
Digital Culture
DESCRIPTION
“Syllabus was born from a conversation about discovery and learning. In discussing the ways that cultural artifacts travel through a society, we imagined how a syllabus could function as a creative tool that allows you to do things like:
i. present what you feel is important for others to experience or consume; ii. group items together in ways that shade and refine their meaning; iii. apply a conceptual or idiosyncratic approach to the syllabus form; iv. develop rogue pedagogies.
via syllabusproject.org, you can find the Syllabus archives and an index of contributors.”