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Thursday 18 April 2013

Interview with Jonnet Middleton (Phd in Mending)

Jonnet Middleton
http://www.futuremenders.com/

 

I met Jonnet Middleton on 11 April 2013 at Lancaster University where she is studying her Phd in Mending.

It was great to understand some of her background leading up to her current study.

After studying Ethno Musiology, ("what's that I hear you ask?", well, it's the study of other dimensions of music such as the cultural, social, material and cognitive. ), she travelled to Spain to follow theSantiago de Compostela and ended up living and working in Gilicia, for eight years on the equivalent of a Regional TV magazine-style programme as a presenter. 

About to embark on a potential career in the Fashion Industry a storm wiped out her portfolio on the computer and she re-assessed her choices deciding instead to return to England and take up an MA in Fashion and Textiles in Birmingham, she left in the first few months, but went on to teach art in a Birmingham prison for five years. Here Jonnet came up against a culture of obstacles which she tried to break down to keep moving forward.

 In 2008 she left to explore new possibilities signing up for Birmingham's MA in Art Practice and Education. She found herself in moving in  'hacking' circles and enjoying and learning from the playful possibilities that go along with the hacking mentality. With skill and imagination the hacker style is to re-purpose, look at new possibilities and ask 'what else can be achieved with new technology?' This lifestyle was an interesting way of coping with consumerism and questioning the standard way of thinking.

So the choice of Phd in Mending came about through this journey as an antedote to re-connect with creative possibilities when most people feel disconnected to a mending philosophy and the creative potential that lies within. Jonnet described that she felt she was losing the agency or power to do things and was seeking a more satisfying way of living. Oppressed by a system that requires an appropriate look for a job she began to question and grow a new relationship with material things. Developing a hacking-type philosophy as a way out of capitalist interests was part of an ultimate drive to appreciate things more. Five years ago Jonnet adopted a more disciplined approach that centred on reduction and has chosen to make her current wardrobe last a lifetime without adding to it! She recently took a trip to Cuba with a broken suitcase containing only clothes that required mending, an extreme boot camp approach to the problem but one which made her feel, she claims, more alive!

Manifestobanner


http://futuremenders.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/futuremenders_flyer.jpg 

 




A pop-up shop with a difference has hit Peterborough city centre, a shop that’s proud to sell nothing. The Mending Shop is open for one week only to help you fix the stuff you already own. With the slogan “Don’t bin it, mend it!” it is a fun opportunity to bring your favourite things back to life.
Unlike a traditional repair shop, The Mending Shop encourages you to learn to mend things for yourself. We have lost the habit of mending and the things we buy are made to last for an ever shorter time. The Mending Shop understands that people are frustrated by throwing things away simply because they don’t know how to do even small repairs. Whether it’s a zip on a favourite pair of jeans or a knob on a toaster, binning it and buying new is usually the far easier option.
At The Mending Shop, we know from experience that fixing things makes us happy. Come along with something you need fixing and together, we’ll see what we can do. We guarantee that a bit of expert advice, friendly company and a nice cup of tea are all you need to get started. Once you’ve learnt some mending skills you’ll be able to fix things for life! The Mending Shop is a one-stop mending mecca where you can tackle any form of repair.

 




 









FIX FIX FIX, GALLERY S.O, LONDON


 http://www.galleryso.com/fix-fix-fix-curated-by-glenn-adamsonarlington-conservation-david-clarke-leo-fitzmaurice-fixperts-alice-kettle-laura-mcgrath-jasleen-kaur-park-view-motors-gord-peteran-stephen-probert-roland-roos-bernhard-schobinger-hans-stofer-lisa-walker-max-warren.e99


The perfect repair would be an invisible one. The hope is to completely restore a broken object to its original function and appearance. But no repair is perfect. It's not possible to turn back the clock, and no matter how skilled the restoration, it will be detectable - at least to expert eyes. This means that, aesthetically speaking, fixing works against itself. It involves a process of self-erasure; the more skilled the repair, the less visible it will be.

Fixing has been much in the air recently. A general enthusiasm for DIY has prompted many people to make good their old things, rather than throw them out and buy something new. Beyond this, a generation of self-anointed 'hackers' try to improve commodities in ways the original manufacturer never intended. A common tactic is to invite all comers to bring in the broken detritus of their lives, and transform each object into an artwork - a strategy pursued by [re]design (London), Klinik der Dinge (Berlin), and Tobias Sternberg's Art Repair Shop (Belfast).

In most cases, however, designers and artists tend to carry out repair in a manner antithetical to its usual role. This has been true at least since Richard Wentworth, in his 1977 photographic series Making Do and Getting By, seized upon extraordinary examples of popular repair, finding in them the invention and energy that one might (in an art context) associate with the Duchampian tradition of the Assisted Readymade. What Wentworth found so exciting in these found examples has remained at the center of artistic interpretations of repair: dramatic juxtapositions of material, inventive repurposing, intentionally sloppy (and hence 'expressive') rejoining: such strategies draw attention to the upcycling process. But this misses the serious work of the repairer, who must subsume any expressive instinct and instead emulate the original condition of the object.

Fix Fix Fix is an exploration of this art of self-effacement. It includes curated objects, made outside of an art context by self-taught and professional repairers, alongside commissioned works by artists who have been asked to respond to the exhibition theme. In each case, the viewer is invited to look closely -- much more closely than is usual in an exhibition context -- to detect the presence of repair.

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