Conceptual and contextual statement
Our main purpose for this project was not too only raise awareness for mental health/illness, but to create an environment where those who have been diagnosed can feel comfortable in the sense that its a way of vocalising a topic that is not talked about and to evoke conversation by creating an installment with three interactive garments, followed along with a short film and photo shoot.
This project was inspired by our last project - about mapping data on to a skirt, however, compared to the last, we go deeper into the specific feelings and emotions a person may feel, finding the commonalities of words people have used to describe their experience with a mental illness from over 100 stories from around the world.
The two garments are made to be expressive and artistic, but also, wearable, with a level of interaction with the garments and the audience, where they are able to contribute and share their feelings and experiences with the second garment. And for the first garment, physically touch and inspect it, finding all the different meanings and tags. There will also be a website to visit, with all our information on our project along with a short film, informing people on the way a person with a mental illness may feel and addressing any misconceptions.
Our project was split into 3 parts. Finding over 100 stories all over the internet and collecting commonalities of words or phrases, Creating the garments - mapping the research we had done, and then using those garments in our film where we address the topic of mental health. We spent the longest time on the research and garments, being the main artifacts of the project. We needed to make sure that what we were doing was not only ethically objective, but the data we use and the way we represent it was the best it could be. However this is an oversimplification as things did tend to get messy, where there was lack of work done by certain group member and lack of communication between each other, which in turn, affected every other member. It is important to remember that this a group project, not an individual. We should have realised that sooner.
We knew from the beginning that working with a sensitive topic, we had to seek ethical help from experts and counselors, however, we never really grasped how every design choice and idea needed to be chosen very carefully, having objective justifications and evidence behind those choices. We started to question every little thing we had done and because of this, our project had shifted from being mostly inspired by the words people have used, to collecting common words and mapping those, essentially turning qualitative data into quantitative. This was also when our project started to look more like a university project, than something we could have done as a passion project. Checking with a counselor definitely made not only our project stronger, but us stronger, knowing how to correctly handle a sensitive topic and to provide a sense of hope.
We hope to be able to expand this idea further as we progress towards year 2 and 3, taking possibly thousands of stories and creating a clothing line, where people could wear in order to make others more comfortable about the topic, sparking more conversations around it - allowing others to be knowledgeable about the topic, supporting those who do have a mental illness.
As this project was inspired by our previous project, where we has mapped the common causes of depression, stress and anxiety. However, we wanted to go further and talk about the bigger picture as a whole. We initially looked at ‘Yume’ and ‘Yami’ Kawaii, which are popular terms from the pioneering subculture in Harajuku, Tokyo; accentuating cuteness, while raising awareness of mental health issues thought clothing and accessories - including bold and explicit words and phrases, translating to things like, “I want to die”. Many issues related to mental illness, i.e. suicide, depression, schizophrenia, social anxiety, etc are extremely stigmatised in Japan - even in Japanese education where teachers and other working professionals will assume that those who are mentally ill have ‘flaws’ or ‘errors’ in their personality/ characteristics, or in other words, “you are mentally ill, because you refuse to change.”
This has greatly inspired our envision of our project. Although having a cultural difference compared to Japan, or more specifically, Harajuku, Tokyo, there are still similarities in ways to represent mental illness through the use of textiles, fashion, imagery and colour; empowering those who wear it. We may speak differently in different countries, but we all speak an international language of mental illness and mental health.
Clothing, or what a person wears is often how a person portrays themselves and their feelings, paving a link between that and mental illness, where essentially, the ‘invisible’ (mental illness) can be visualised by something purely expressive and visual (clothing). This is how our project fits in with itself.
However, creating a statement or raising awareness through the use of textiles has been done many times, in fashion runways, by both big and small brands around the world and it’s not even limited to just fashion. But, what differentiates us from others is that our installation would literally bring people closer together being put in an immersive environment where they can physically interact with our artifacts and build and learn off of it. Instead of being fed large amounts of number and data, actively involving people with interaction, would bring it down to a real and person level - people would be able to process all that information more easily as they are able to choose what they look at and choose to take a step back if they need to.
Our project closely relates to the real world, as the data collected that would be mapped into out garments and used in the short film, has been directly taken from stories around the world from real people. None of our research had been altered or changed, making it significantly more scarier, knowing the severity and realism of it. Introducing people to real stories can seem invasive and uncomfortable, however, you can only go up from there. Learning more about the stigmatisation of mental illness, addressing the false misinformation and assumptions spread by other about mental illness, learning about how to support or help someone in need, and most importantly, knowing AND understanding what mental illness is, and that it is a very real thing.
