Critique
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⤢ a directory that gathers, stacks and links practices that work with, through and beyond (digital) fashion [âŚ]
LATEST UPDATE 17.07.2025
[012]
Mission Accomplished: Belanciege
Collaboration
politics
TrafĂł Gallery, photo by DĂĄvid BirĂł
Hito Steyerl "Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE" is part of the exhibition "⌠of bread, wine, cars, security and peace". The point of departure for the three-channel video installation is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and how this historical event paved the way for commodification and privatization. The artists turn to the field of fashion, using the luxury brand Balenciaga as an example to reflect on political and cultural changes in the period of the last thirty years. The video installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE presented at TrafĂł Gallery reveals similar âinvasionsâ of history and emphasizes their cyclical nature by turning towards the processes of economic and political realignment that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and by featuring examples that target our hyper-contemporary world armed with trend analysis, data mining, political advertising and audience targeting.
The video installation is co-created by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl and MiloĹĄ TrakiloviÄ and is based on their lecture in 2019 at n.b.k. - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Almost 30 years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lecture reflects on post-1989 transformations and political rearrangements in the former Soviet territories, sheds light on the interconnections between culture and populism, and examines in a broader context the mechanisms of oligarchic-capitalist culture that emerged during the 'privatisation' of the former Eastern bloc.
01.08.25
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gatâs essay âScroll, Skim, Stareâ in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
01.08.25
[051]
Towards A Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed newspaper)
Collaboration
critical
Following a process of open exchanges and a three-day research workshop in London, at London South Bank University and Kingâs College, London, this publication brings together researchers who address the problems of technological scale, thinking through the potentials of 'the minor'; or what we are referring to as minor (or minority) tech â small tech that operates at human scale (more peer to peer than server-client) and stutters in its expression and application. As Marloes de Valk puts it in the Damaged Earth Catalog: âSmall technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from the commercial Internet.â As such, the publication sets out to question the universal ideals of technology and its problems of scale, extending it to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay (Toward a Minor Literature), namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value.
âwe're exploring how technological scale sets conditions for relations, feelings, democratic processes, and infrastructures.â
01.08.25
[087]
Creating Feminist Paths with Mood Boards
Individual
pedagogy
In Creating Feminist Paths with Mood Boards, Floriane FoâŻMisslin opens up a path toward an intersectional feminist citational practice for visual references. The essay rethinks mood boardsâoften dismissed as simple inspiration toolsâas sites for thoughtful and politically engaged feminist work. Misslin shows how they can map connections, surface overlooked voices, and challenge dominant narratives in design and education. Through intentional curation, mood boards become spaces for reflection, citation, and imaginationâoffering ways to practice solidarity, build collective knowledge, and foster more inclusive and critical modes of working, especially in creative and pedagogical contexts.
Misslinâs feminist expansion of the mood board as a citational tool is a much-needed intervention in fashion, where visual referencing often goes unacknowledged or uncredited. The work draws urgent attention to how inspiration circulatesâand how it might be redirected toward more ethical, inclusive, and reflexive practices. In a field that frequently celebrates aesthetics without interrogating power, this approach offers a critical perspective on citation as both visual and political. It urges fashion practitioners to trace their influences with care and to reimagine how knowledge is shared.
âWhere does authorship begin? Is a bibliographyâor a set of visual referencesâintellectual property?â
01.08.25
[090]
Vanish Pointer
Individual
experimental
Vanish Pointer by Hyunseo Cho (as used on the Softwear Directory)
Vanish Pointer is a web-based project by Hyunseo Cho that reimagines the digital interface as a three-dimensional, perspective-based space. Designed as both a web extension and a standalone platform, this tool establishes an analogy between our perception of web interfaces and the visual system of perspective. Users can shift the vanishing point to explore websites from new angles, transforming flat webpages into dynamic spatial environments where citational elements â such as sources, authors, dates and internal references â become central structuring forces. Users can invert hierarchies, reveal hidden relationships, and explore multidimensional connections by changing their viewpoint â including curvilinear, panoramic, and spherical perspectives. Vanish Pointer thus encourages critical and sensory engagement with the knowledge architectures that shape online content.
In an age where information circulates endlessly, is remixed and is decontextualised, developing visual citation methods is not just a matter of giving credit; it is an urgent way of taking relational accountability. The hypertextual nature of our digital environments is full of hidden lineages: sources, references and contextual cues that are often obscured by flat, linear design conventions. Experimental approaches such as Vanish Pointer reclaim these overlooked dimensions, rendering citation as a spatial, visual and navigable architecture, not just metadata. By reimagining interfaces as relational terrains, such tools encourage users to think critically about how knowledge is structured, traced and performed, transforming acts of reading, browsing and linking into moments of situated awareness.
In doing so, they foreground citational relationality â an understanding of citation as an active, situated practice that reveals the networks of dependency, influence and care underpinning digital knowledge, rather than as a static reference.
01.08.25
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As the online realm often feels infinite, this directory highlights non-commercial, critical, and experimental online content related (but not limited) to fashion and creative practices. It features projects, essays, visuals, and events, offering tools to navigate this dynamic landscape.
In gathering a wide variety of practitioners and collectives, we are always expanding, and looking to add to this growing bibliography of âbeing onlineâ.
If you've encountered or created something that fits within this scope, feel free to share and submit!
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