Aimée Zito Lema and Elisa van Joolen – Our Rags Magazine

Description

Our Rags Magazine is a project initiated by visual artist Aimée Zito Lema (1982, NL/AR) and designer Elisa van Joolen (1983, NL/IT). In this collaborative project they investigate transformative processes, during which they make proposals for new forms of collective production aimed at the reuse of textiles (clothing). Our Rags Magazine questions our consumer behavior and its relationship to the world in which we live. The project began with a workshop in which children were invited to think of new ways to make clothing. The workshop revolved around the dissection of articles of clothing discarded by the children. All of this clothing was cut into small pieces and recycled into a new material: paper. A Dutch windmill in Loenen (NL) is still able to carry out the age-old technique of transforming old rags into cotton-based paper. Here the shredded clothing was transformed into coarse-grained and tactile sheets of paper which make up the concrete basis of the project. In return the children received the rag paper, and together they made their new, imaginative clothing with this. Our Rags Magazine further expands the potential of recycled material, due to the fact that a fashion publication is being printed on this material. Here is a magazine where the pages not only show clothing, but actually are clothing. Designed by Elisabeth Klement, the magazine contains contributions by photographer Janneke van der Hagen and writers Maria Barnas and Persis Bekkering. Our Rags Magazine aims to stimulate the invention of new possibilities for our fashion system and is meant to be an ode to collective creativity. Our Rags Magazine is part of the project Pulp. In this ongoing collaborative project, Aimée Zito Lema and Elisa van Joolen reflect on the lifespan of an article of clothing, or on its physical presence and material quality. Central to the project Pulp is the idea of transformation.