COMME des MARXISTS -- White Columns, New York 2013 / Performa, 2013
Cat Walk - White Columns, New York / Peroforma 2013
Intallation view - White Columns, New York
MARX SPEAKS CHINESE
Karl Marx Speaks Chinese
The design of these works is based on the cheapest kind of bad quality bags but good looks that can be seen around the world used by people who have lots of stuff to carry but little means to do so. They can be frequently seen with street vendors, home less people, refugees or simply students with limited budgets. According to their origin I refer to them as “Chinese bags” but the Germans call them “Turk bags” because they are often sold in Turkish shops. I could imagine that there are many ways to refer to these bags depending on where they are sold. I myself have quite some affinity to these bags since I am a student I have used them for various moving of stuff and art works. Most of my early material existence has traveled in them in subways, in trains, on planes and in cars and I still use them, in particular for my fashion project. In fact most of my COMME des MARXISTS works are stored in them.
The quality of these bags that come in two sizes has not changed and can be qualified as remarkably strong plastic fabrics and a very poor zippers that don’t last if they even work in the first place. I have realized that over the time, the bag design has evolved from the typical blue, white and red stripes into more sophisticated tartans patterned ones and a more colorful next generation is already widely in use in China but has not yet reached New York discount shops and street vendors as of early 2014. The use of the three color plaid seemed to not only be convenient for the production of these cheap bags that might use recycled plastics but also cater to very popular middle class tastes thanks to the phenomenal success of Burberry’s fashion which is selling plaid designs only.
In the US, there exists a traditional working class jacket which is made of wool and based on checkered-cloth patterns. Without knowing their exact history I assume that it was traveling with British immigrants and subsequently became simplified and Americanized. Like in GB with Burberry, Ralph Lauren picked up on this plaids and used them quite successfully in his middle and upper middle class designs. When the original tartans stood for regions, clans and families, the London fashion house sells it world wide as a indistinct meaningless design that communicates nothing but it’s luxury brand. The biggest success of Burberry is in nouveau rich China which also knows to copy it in so many ways that it gets redistributed again as cheap fake mass product throughout the world and influenced these bag designs. Interesting enough, Ralph Lauren redesigns the working class jackets and adds sometimes fake Americana labels next to its own.
For my Karl Marx Speaks Chinese I purchased these checkered jackets from second hand shops including the Salvation Army and integrated my Chinese plastic fabrics so it would create some kind of a new organic design. The title of this series was silk-screened in English and Chinese on the plastic material and served as a logo added somewhere on the jackets. In some instances the plastic fabric extended the cut of a jacket and turned it into a coat. Ironically, this fall, Celine, a very expensive high end French fashion house, picked as well up on this ubiquitous bag design and made some beautiful runway line out of it albeit without any of my conceptual context framework which could make Celine look cynical. For a photo shooting I was able to chat up a lady from a gallery opening dressed in such couture and have her pose next to one of my designs which really enriched the meaning of my attempts.
KARL MARX SPEAKS CHINESE
(design assistance and production: Christine Heist, Rachel Dainer-Best - Modelling: Brandon Johnson, .. more names comings
production images - taken in my studio
hear worn by Simur, a man, but it s femal - for femal