On Sunday (August 6th, 2020) a clothes exchange campaign took place in Offenbach, where a clothesline was used.
Offenbach – Anyone who walked past the Klingspormuseum on Sunday may have been amazed at the clotheslines stretched on the museum forecourt, on which colorful items of clothing were lined up. However, this was not about the “big laundry”, but a clothing exchange campaign in which visitors were allowed to hang expendable clothes from their possessions on the lines and in return to take away clothes discarded by other participants. The small exchange was part of the program accompanying the exhibition “Covered, uncovered. Body and Identity ”, which the Klingspormuseum has housed since June.
Originally, the campaign, which was also intended to draw attention to the sustainability of textiles, was intended as a real barter flea market. In order to avoid the direct exchange and the associated closeness, the solution was devised with the independent hanging and searching on the tensioned lines. They have researched “that a T-shirt is worn three times on average in Germany and then disposed of,” says curator Dorothee Ader, explaining the background to the campaign.
The clothing industry is one of the most environmentally harmful branches of industry, with vast amounts of synthetic fibers ending up in the ocean as microplastics every year: To set an example, the clothing exchange campaign offers an alternative to mere disposal. “I have an item of clothing that I no longer like or no longer need – but maybe someone else likes it,” says Ader, explaining the simple principle.
Together with her children, she sets the starting signal for the campaign on Sunday morning and hangs up items of clothing that she owns as the first barter item. Before the official start, the first visitors followed suit and equipped the lines with trousers, blouses, sweaters and jackets. The actual exchange only comes into play during the course of the campaign, initially more clothes are added than are taken with them.
As part of the program, the clothing exchange campaign fits seamlessly into the exhibition, which will run until next Sunday, September 13th, in Klingspormuseum in the Herrnstrasse 80 can be visited. In cooperation with the Frankfurt-Rhein-Main cultural region under their annual theme “Clothing, Freedom, Identity – Yesterday and Today”, the Klingspormuseum’s exhibition investigates what clothes and tattoos mean for a person’s identity. An essential aspect is the connection between clothing and the person who wears it, says Dorothee Ader, and how clothing, for example, can function as “memory” for its wearer.
One of the core pieces of “Covered, Uncovered” is an installation by the artist Sandra Heinz, who collected items of clothing worn by friends and acquaintances and wrote down related stories.
The exchange of clothes on the forecourt is not the only accompanying activity with which the Klingspormuseum also presents itself outside of the in-house rooms: the “Mobile Wardrobe” can be seen in the citizens’ office until September 18th.
In this installation, built by HfG graduate Max Brück from an old cupboard from the 1950s, clothes, stories, images, texts and photos are hung on hooks, hangers, clothes rails and cupboard walls – to give an insight into clothing and identity, history and various cultural backgrounds To grant backgrounds of our region (we reported). (Jan Schuba)
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