Hey punks <3,
Without much ado, in harmony with the efficient core of our next quarterly topic, we’ll cut right to the chase. There’s no such thing as discarded, unwanted and surplus ideas. Reusing, borrowing, and reshaping is necessary. Restructuralization, reassembly and decomposition are processes not to be shunned. Decay is beautiful. Repair is the new black. Emotional connection to things and places makes them last longer and make us preserve them. We’ve collected artists and their works from across Europe to show you they approach to repurposing materials, thoughts, clothes, biases, stories, our shared future and more.
Among them will be, of course, a thematic SWARM editorial, tackling the feeling of being overwhelmed by visual ballast and information. We’ll present you with traditional tailoring, striving for environmentally- and body-friendly clothing, a Polish brand whose mantra chant is to “stop creating new, new, new”, hand-painted seasonless apparel featuring nymphs. A rare acceptance of transience and imperfection in the fashion industry, recycled handmade shoes inspired by environment, sustainability and feminism, upcycled nightwear and underwear collection.
You’ll be delighted by paintings repurposing mythology and its symbolism, other ones unfolding queer eastern Euro slav topics (so endlessly revamped, right?), surreal landscapes encompassing 2D and 3D techniques applied to painting. How about a mystery black box that recycles the DNA of species on the brink of extinction to merge it with the human genome? Scientific illustration reflecting environmental justice and architecture? And what would you say of an artist who resurrects Ancient Greek and Byzantine paintings in graffiti?
And surely, there’s more. Can the gaming environment ever by eco-conscious as video games are practically dematerialized? As a side dish, we would like to offer you paintings portraying nature in all its forms – a forest, a psyche, a subconscious mind, illustrations spilling the sweet&sour sauce of human existence on this planet and ones tackling daydreaming and dissociation.
Video art exploring the angles of treating Earth and her natural phenomena as living, breathing beings, a theatre company doing scenography only with found and repurposed objects, breathing new meanings into them, essays about anxiety and sweeping up old pathways, long overgrown.
A lot of thoughtful, scary, challenging, pretty, meaningful, playful, inspiring and imaginative stuff will unfold over the next three months and we’ll be delighted if you take our guiding hand to experience it with us.
Love, The SWARM MAG team.
For your reading pleasure:
The PlayStation Dreamworld by Alfie Bown
Speculative Ruinology / Interpretation as a mode of Survival by Václav Janoščík, Boris Ondreička (eds.)
Napínat současnost / Detektivní pátrání po sdíleném světě by Václav Janoščík
Oděv – Móda – Tvorba by Helena Jarošová
Decolonizing Nature / Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology by Thomas J. Demos
Atlas of Transformation / Including relevant historical texts alongside new writing, among the authors contributing to the Atlas are Timothy Garton Ash, Hakim Bey, Homi K. Bhabha, Deleuze and Guattari, Boris Groys, Karl Holmqvist, Frederic Jameson, Franz Kafka and Slavoj Zizek.
The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform by Janette Kim, Erik Carver
Eco Fashion by Sass Brown
Wear No Evil: How to Change the World with Your Wardrobe by Greta Eagan
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
CREDITS
Text / Františka Blažková
Animation / Alexandra Volfová aka @sasa.ca.ca (for her other works click on her name)
