This research-creation project in visual arts takes as its starting point the Jeansdinge (denim objects), a collection of more than 500 objects covered with denim or a material imitating it. Initiated in 2001 by artist and teacher Katharina Hohmann (HEAD - Geneva) and designer Prof. Katharina Tietze (ZHdK), this collection has never been shown in its entirety before.
Because of its American origins, the jean refers to an ideal of freedom and singularity, and to a massification of uses (two billion jeans are sold each year). Charged with historical and aesthetic stakes, it also echoes political struggles against systems of domination, which the Jeansdinge collection embodies through its hybrid, kitsch, and even queer character.
These objects will be made available to researchers and artists to be analyzed (according to various transversal criteria), exhibited and discussed (in the form of an exhibition-colloquium), and then activated ("actualized") by filmed performances that will be gathered in a film intended to be screened in festivals. A website will associate the objects with their documentation and videos.
Between art, design and fashion, this project will deal with the following problematic: can the sensitive relation (spatial, filmic, etc.) of a collection of "vulgar" objects deploy an artistic interpretation of the material-object that is the jean?