2019

CHRISTINA DÖRFLER “EXCUSE MY DUST SERIES”

Concerned with the impact of groundwater pollution from the dyeing and bleaching techniques of large textile industries, Christina Dörfler began to work in an experimental, often collaborative, and performative way, inventing quite unorthodox methods for transforming colours and surfaces. 
Her experimental approach to dyeing began with her first collection, “Wandering Tribe” (2012), in which she used experimental indigo vats in collaboration with Joseph Koó and hand-woven materials exposed to rusting processes. 
In her next project, entitled “Excuse My Dust Series”, initiated in 2016 and ongoing, she engaged in collaborations with artists Manuel Wandl and Jasmin Schaitl. 
Treating textiles with materials found in nature, such as earth, sand, and metal, or in a domestic context, such as a mixture of flour, water, and bleach, she triggered chemical reactions and processes beyond the designer’s direct control. Using case as a creative element, she obtains unpredictable, irreproducible results: unique patterns that appear as traces of destructive, corrosive, erosive processes. These processes are additionally charged with artistic input, as in the case of performances realised in collaboration with Jasmin Schaitl in Warsaw and Vienna within the “Transfashional” project. 
Introducing performative elements, the very process of transforming the fabric from plain black to coloured and patterned is charged with other narratives and meanings. It was drenched in new semantic qualities associated with the performative action, which imprints and impresses the body onto the rough surface of the textile covered with dry dough, slowly breaking it and inscribing in it the memory of this intense and frail movement. 
In Vienna, the performance was transformed into one-to-one sessions, in which audience members engaged in a gestural and tactile dialogue with Jasmin Schaitl. 
Both the process and the outcomes, performances, dyed garments, and textiles appear as something unique, determined by reactions and dynamics which partially slip the designer’s control. 
In this, they echo experiments undertaken by Maison Martin Margiela in 1997 on the occasion of Rotterdam’s retrospective or Hussein Chalayan’s debut collection “Tangent Flows” from 1993. 
Yet, in the present context, a practice which problematises processes of degradation and decay inevitably resonates with highly urgent questions of pollution and a necessary turn towards zero-impact, traceable, sustainable and co-creative modes of production. 

Christina Dörfler lives and works in Vienna. She studied Art Education at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She works in the field of fashion, textile art and performance, and has taught fashion at Fashion College Herbststrasse, Vienna, since 2013. Currently, she is a PhD researcher at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Jasmin Schaitl is an artist and performer, and graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Since 2011, she has worked internationally as a solo performer, visual artist, and artistic director of group performances; she also leads workshops and interdisciplinary projects, curates, and teaches.