If you see a friendly bespectacled new face around IDC, chances are it's Otto von Busch, newly appointed IDC faculty. Otto is a design activist-artist-fashion theorist-hacker and a self-described "haute couture heretic and fashion renegade" . His project Selfpassage "explores how fashion can be used for empowerment, self-development and personal growth instead of being a phenomenon of top-down decrees and collective anxiety".
How IDC is that?! Whether its through informative booklets or open workshops, Otto's work attempts to democratize and hack the fashion system, by exploring alternative modes of relating, production and identity. He speaks of "Not boycotting fashion or scorn it as the emperors new clothes, but instead celebrating the magic and desire flowing through that system, reconnecting it to empower instead of regarding it as an enslaving culture"
Appropriately, he's teaching (Un)Fashion this semester. We are wishing him and his family a warm welcome to New York and look forward to having his special presence in our community.
Check out some of his awesome zines, explaining the mechanics, rituals and virus nature of fashion, for download here.
And triple make sure you look at his various projects here.
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