In this series of online meetups we launch a collection of garments into the global imagination. The garments we have sketched here are metaphors for new thinking around political forms as well as attempts to re-stitch the social fabric. Our aim is not to offer solutions but to activate a type of thinking that can continuously find them.
With this in mind we have ventured forth as artists to explore fields usually ploughed by experts. Our aim is to think outside the boxing ring where new ideas are ritually knocked out at the point of entry. To avoid this we will use new language to invite new thoughts and supplement intellectual head-gear with simile and metaphor.
We will therefore deal with political topics as if they were clothes because they actually are. The modern state is a more or less fitting garment covering a whole nation. While we know that autocratic regimes are too much of a straight-jacket and anarchic societies too loose a fit, we remain blissfully ignorant of just how unsuited many of our collective attires are. With democracies still wrapped in swaddling the body politic itches on all sides: The uniform of our education may not fit the variables of our professional lives. The economic overall may be too oversized for a planet of limited means.
All these are clothes more real than those we put on in the morning and take off at night. They are clothes we all wear all the time. Clothes that cover societies and compass the globe. Clothes so influential that they determine the shape of nations, the course of the state, the destiny of the planet.
They inevitably change over time but not always in time. All too often outdated attires determine societal mobility, the shape of the economy, the cut of the state and the alarming state of the world.
The latter suggest that it is time to make our way to the change room and search for a new set of clothes. The designs presented here may look unusual at first. But try them on. They may fit better than you expect. They may be the fashion you had imagined all along.
What follows are only suggestions. Feel free to improve where you see fit.