"The cut ignores the world’s hardness and absoluteness so that it can make and unmake its representation, subjecting it to a whirlwind of furtive, momentary meanings that shun all mummified order."
- Germano Celant
11”x17” by Elisa van Joolen is an on-going project that examines and challenges the fashion industry’s prevailing value systems and proposes new methods of production. The project began in 2013 with a series of conversations with representatives of various fashion brands including G-Star, O’Neill, gsus sindustries, Rockwell by Parra, Converse, moniquevanheist, and Nike. These companies then contributed by donating clothing and footwear in the form of samples, archival pieces and stock. A selection of these, complemented with pieces of second-hand and no-brand clothing have undergone a process of cutting out and reconstructing to become 11”x17” Sweaters and Invert Footwear. 11”x17” creates a network. It unites different categories of clothing and different values within fashion; an eclectic mixture of mid-market, second-hand, and high-end items.
The visual and textual reader published documents the first iteration of 11”x17”. It explores some of the questions that lie at the heart of the project through contributions by Lynn Berger, Pascale Gatzen, Ruby Hoette, Alexandra Landré and José Teunissen: What constitutes clothing a collection? To whom does a piece of clothing belong? What is the relationship between a fashion brand’s collection and the contents of the average wardrobe? What does it mean to cut into a garment? What happens when a piece of clothing consists of parts of multiple brands?
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Elisa van Joolen (1983) is a designer and researcher based in Amsterdam who received her MFA from Parsons NYC. Her work has been has been recognised with a Fulbright (2010) and Han Nefkens Award (2016), a Talent Grant – Creative Industries Fund NL (2017), and is part of the Stedelijk Museum’s Amsterdam collection.
11”x17” is initiated by Elisa van Joolen (NL/ITA) is an artist and researcher based in Amsterdam. Merging the analytical with a hands-on process Van Joolen’s work investigates the current fashion system exploring and proposing new models of production and presentation. Her approach to clothing design is characterised by strategies of intervention and reconfiguration. Her projects often reflect specific social contexts and emphasise collaboration and participation. They expose relational aspects of clothing and subvert processes of value production. She lectures at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and Goldsmiths, University of London.
