Project "Criminal" Couture: Fashion for Freedom from Mass Incarceration
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Combating the Carceral State, Restoring Humanness & Facilitating Freedom through Magical Avant-Garde Fashion & Fine Art Performance. Manifesto of Values:
1.
The "Criminal" Couture Project seeks to illuminate the plight of our incarcerated brothers and sisters through the medium of fashion, spoken-word and fine art performance. The "Criminal" Couture fashion line will include formal dresses and ready-to-wear casual pieces. The textiles are designed in a style which renders the images almost invisible from far away, while strikingly clear up close. By t
urning the images of our incarcerated brothers into consumer products, we hope to bring exposure to and problematize the horrifying capitalistic realities of the carceral state, as well as drawing attention to the plight of the individuals currently locked up in Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Joliet, IL. The "Criminal" Couture Project directly involves our incarcerated brothers in all aspects of the art/design process. We take submissions from a wide range of incarcerated artist/activists at Stateville CC, therefore shedding light on, things that usually go unseen- the highly creative and deeply introspective prison art of our time. Actively Imagine a world without Prison as a solution to tough societal issues.
2. Engage critically with the prison industrial complex through art, fashion and performance.
3. Include the diverse collage of voices, images, and creations of imprisoned artists.
4. To Support a small group of “criminal” couture artist professionally, emotionally and pragmatically through an elaborate barter system, providing art supplies, mentorship, assisting in communication to the outside world, art critiques via phone and letter, book exchanges, and through systemic and/or legal advocacy when possible.
5. Exercise metaphorical and physical freedom throughout the “Criminal” Couture production process.
6. Utilize creativity, beauty, whimsy, magic, problem solving and other artistic methods as an act of rebellion against systemic injustice.
7. Subvert, work around, counter, take-action against oppressive Criminal Justice System/Prison industrial complex.
* We acknowledge that person first language is not alway used in our copy when it makes things less clear or too lengthy.
* Quotation marks ("") are nested around the word criminal in most of our copy eg. Project "Criminal" Couture to imply that the term criminal is socially constructed as well as to point out that many individuals that are labeled as criminals in our society may be better described in other ways for example: people who struggle with addiction (drug users), people experiencing poverty or homelessness (crimes of necessity), people suffering with mental illness, neurologically non-conforming individuals, individuals who commit crimes as self defense or self preservation ect... A whole other category of individuals might include those that have not actually committed a crime thus having been wrongfully convicted (however still identify with the criminal couture brand because of their incarceration and close proximity to others considered to be "criminal" to our society at large). The "Criminal" in "Criminal" Couture also stands for those that negotiate spaces of tension and conflict, including artist and activists who rebel against the status quo, by practicing art actions, critical resistance, conscientious objection or other forms of protest. (race, gender, education level, expressions of culture, religion, ability or inability to conform to societal norms, privilege, as well as socioeconomic statues all play a role in free artist abilities to remain free and the incarcerated to become imprisoned in the first place as well as the oppressions experienced by people once incarcerated)
