the parachute unfolds as contextiles scripted cloth

resilient

relationscape map of the person and territory

fall or flight

follow in animate threads

woven into the war machine

invisible force of women at work

wedding gown or the weight of men luxurious exquisite silk 

what is not destroyed is repurposed and reveiled again

simple and complex within sublime nature of thought

performative poetic and politicized

gestures adrift through layers of materiality and meaning

from military wear to fashion 

worn out or rich of told stories

socio.political.environmental interpretatation

mindful of history but not bound by it

ww2 historic data is gathered to un.fold the parachute project. silk parachutes were used extensively to drop soldiers, supplies, animals from planes to targets on the ground. in war companies that designed luxurious expensive lingerie turned their garment production over to parachute manufacturing. decommissioned parachutes were repurposed, resewn into wedding dresses. nylon was developed to replace japanese imported silk to replace reliance on the enemy. from military ware to fashion wear, weaving narratives and insight into the profound resilience of humans within crisis, both remarkable and horrific manifestations at once.

How can you participate? Attend in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca  

pk langshaw

Professor pk langshaw, Department of Design and Computation Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University strives to facilitate fluid models of knowledge acquisition in design education. langshaw re.searches a poetic/political language for designing, feminist and interventionist as socio.cultural.environmental en.vision.ing. interested in all things verse: diverse, reverse, inversion, transversal, and reversible, the hybrid works are mediated by traditional and digital mediums to in.form garment making, poems, bookworks, and performative events. langshaw has been instrumental in driving sustainability in the design & computation arts programs, faculty of fine arts, the university and external communities. 

two main programs of research/creation include: 

wild cities : beyond the human centric view 

outlines a strategy for circumventing opposites. what does this mean exactly? it is a search for ways to disrupt the continuation of how we currently construct urban space as a disconnect within habits.habitats.inhabitants. wild cities asks what would designing beyond the human centric view change in radical and positive ways our individual and collective patterns of being and behaving?

the parachute unfolds : follow the thread