Travail et vêtement

Among the objects, spaces and services specific to work, clothing is closely related to people, bodies, gestures, movements in space, experience or ordeals, feelings, in short all those trivial, day-to-day, individual or collective, anthropological and phenomenological aspects. It focuses on "workers" at work.

As with technical clothing, augmented, where already a corporate element is in evidence, clothing interfaces with the place, operating as a kind of prosthesis or a faithful complement, depending on how one sees it, but always as a means of materialising an esprit de corps. The most prominent shifts currently taking place in the world of work (digital labor, notions of sharing, service, caring) nevertheless seem to trivialise or neglect it, or create fantasies around cyborg versions of it, where work infiltrates the body itself.

This development is all the more noticeable as exactly a century ago, work clothes had a civilisational value, which, in a symmetrical logic, goes fittingly with the changes in contemporary clothing. The situation invites consideration of the current reversals which bring history back into play. Thayaht's TuTa (Florence, 1919), a political project in its day, whose modern derivative versions range from high-performance suits to disposable overalls, is chosen as a demonstrator to mobilise architecture, art and design students on the subject. Their offerings will be used on the one hand to clothe the Biennale "workers", and on the other to provide an innovative or critical point of view on the modern issues around work clothing. The exhibition will show these different perspectives, which will be discussed at the study day entitled "Comment le travail se porte-t-il?" (How do we wear work?).

Curator : Clotilde Félix-Fromentin en collaboration avec Anna Grassi
Partners : Alfredo Grassi S.p.A.
Participants : ENSASE, ESADSE
Site : Galerie de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieur d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne

1 Rue Buisson, 42000 Saint-Étienne