The research started from an electronic fabric shaver and the fuzz material inside. Why do people need the tool, and what kind of people would need it? We looked for some old clothes and collected stories about these clothes. We found that their life length is determined by the timeliness of owners' self-identity, which also explains why some people need to use fabric shaver as a tool to extend the service time of clothes because we will selfishly hope that the life cycle of clothes is determined by the speed of changes in our own self-identity, rather than the lifespan of the material itself.
We collected the date of acquisition and abandonment of these clothes, that is, the date of birth and death, the reason why the owner wanted to cherish or abandon the clothes, and we want to seal the fuzz and make a series of souvenir objects from the materials taken from the clothes to show the special story of each clothing. We used candles, which have a strong sense of time passes, to represent the objective and subjective lifespan of clothes. The small objects in the middle of the candle represent the reasons why old clothes are discarded, some because of fuzz, others because of childish colours, etc. We combine the subjective with the objective into new objects to represent the unique story of each item of clothing. The length of the candle wick indicates the distance they have travelled with the owner. Candles that have been with the owner for a long time will burn out, while some candles that are discarded after only one or two uses will only burn a small amount.
The clothing itself is an ordinary industrial product, but after people wear it for months or years, the clothes become carriers of people's emotional memory. It would be a fuss if people mourned every abandoned piece of clothing. However, we hope to remind people that ordinary daily necessities will also become the bearer of memories. Ordinary items also have emotional weight.In Collaboration with:
The Cloth Identifications - Booklet
