February 18. Hands.on.matter: Re/upcycling and Textiles

Monday, February 18, 19:00
Hands.on.matter: Re/upcycling and Textiles

Hands.on.matter invites you to the next event in the bimonthly series: Re/upcycling and Textiles.

Have you ever wondered what happens with the clothes that are thrown away into the recycling containers around town? The innate idea of reusing clothing is to be a helpful, positive act for lives that are in need. Instead of being burned on a wastemill, the clothes are recycled or upcycled to create new value in a new context. But is it really that straightforward?

This hands.on.matter event takes a different approach than the two prior events: We will zoom out on textile material flows and challenge how we can think textile waste. Textiles are surrounding us in our everyday lives, our bodies, furniture, transportation, we sleep in textiles, and at the same time it is difficult to detect where these materials come from, how they are made, and what happens to them after use.

The blurry difference between re- and upcycling in textiles will be explored through a presentation by Tim van der Loo who is currently working on the topic of recycling Denim into a new textile material by embroidering jeans fibers together. Followed by Rebecca Hiles and Stefanie Kenitz who will generously share what happens behind the scene in the textile sorting department at Berliner Stadtmission. Hereafter a creative intervention, where isles of various craftwork techniques will be available, sets to explore how we are thinking about textile waste and its opportunities to become something new.

The presentations and workshop are assisted by an exposition. Designers Tim van der Loo, Alberte Laursen Rosenborg and artist Elena Azzedín will exhibit works on textile waste, circularity in fashion and semantics. Scroll down to see more info about the participants.

We will provide the necessary materials, yet if you have an old favorite t-shirt at home or another piece of dearly beloved clothing you want to give a new life, you are very welcome to bring it. It can also be something old and torn you wonder what to do with, like a sheet or towel.

Everyone is welcome at the event, bring a friend, a neighbour, colleague or who might have an interest in learning more about the world of textile waste and hands on learning on how to turn trash into gold.

The event is for free, but voluntary donations are welcome.

BERLINER STADTMISSION: Berliner Stadtmission is a 135 year old charity organisation that sets to help the weaker groups of society with goods, shelter and food. A big part of the Berliner Stadtmission is the textile charity department based on clothing waste donations. Rebecca Hines and Stefanie Kenitz from Berliner Stadtmission are going to talk about post-consumer textiles and how they intervene with donated textiles that are not always useful. They research on how to collaborate and participate with designers and creatives to tackle their problems with textile waste.

ALBERTE LAURSEN ROTHENBORG: Alberte Laursen Rothenborg (DK) is a bridge-builder between design and sustainable strategies. Her passion is development and implementation of circular economy and sustainable strategies in design and fashion. Her MA dissertation, ‘Circular Fashion Transitions – the waste and value of design(ers)’, was made in collaboration with the Berlin-based consultancy, Circular.Fashion. Investigating how design and material strategies can strengthen and push forward the implementation of circularity in fashion. The Manufactum Module, a commercial collaboration with a German lifestyle brand (one jacket, one west), will be exhibited at the hands.on.matter event. Alongside Welcome to Wasteland, an activistic approach to design where Rothenborg collected her own waste over a two month period and made it into clothing installations. Rothenborg holds a MA in Sustainability in Fashion from Esmod Berlin, and a BA in fashion design from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She is currently based in Copenhagen working with the sustainable fashion brand Önling.

ELENA AZZEDÍN: Elena Azzedín (ES) is an artist and curator, currently belonging to the curatorial team of the international artistic platform AADK Spain. As an artist Azzedín has always been interested in urban interventions and relational art, responding to the need of making art as part of our daily life. Her latest body of work consists of weaving in fences located in the public sphere. The urban interventions of weaving fences is about its literal semantics as much as about the symbolic value of the action; the presence of the body in the public space magnifying a historical female repetitive labor which belonged to the private sphere. The weaving technique has become for Azzedín, a place for experimentation, creating sculptures with interwoven natural local fibers as well as using found objects as looms in which the contents and the container have a dialectical relationship, often ironic.

HANDS.ON.MATTER: Hands.on.matter is an explorative collective of multidisciplinary creatives focusing on the matter of material by a questioning of resources, consumption, sustainability and culture through a bimonthly series of talks, workshops and expositions.

PHILOSOPHY: Hands.on.matter believes in taking a step back and rediscovering the kosmos of matter one material at the time, zooming in on compositions and zooming out on flows. The aspiration is to build new structures and (re)discover designs for a more sustainable and circular future. Hands.on.matter seeks to host thought provoking and desirable templates in the interdisciplinary field between design, art and architecture.

Hands.on.matter is organized by Tim Van der Loo and Sandra Nicoline Nielsen

TIM VAN DER LOO: Tim van der Loo (NL) is an experimental multidisciplinary designer located in Berlin where he is working in between the fields of textile, furniture and illustration. He studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven were he graduated in 2016 and is currently doing a master in Textile and Surface design at Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin. His work engages with sustainable material, contrast, and tactility to generate playful objects.

SANDRA NICOLINE NIELSEN: Sandra Nicoline Nielsen (DK) is a Techno-Anthropologist (Msc.) from Aalborg University, Denmark. She explores how socio-material practices supports transitions into new economies, and has in her Master’s thesis been working with social infrastructures of Circular Economy in Berlin. Nielsen is interested in how new technologies and social infrastructures can accelerate sustainability. She has been facilitating business development within organic, biodegradable materials through design thinking.

Photos by Benjamin Busch