PARIS MEN’S WEEK/ — The Man Who Measures the Clouds (L’homme qui mesure les nuages) is an art piece by Jan Fabre that Vibskov came across last summer during his travels in Kanasawa, Japan. The poetic gesture of measuring something unmeasurable inspired him and the team for the A/W18-collection.
To find sense where there is no sense in a culture where we are obsessed about numbers, we seek to measure, analyze, compare and categorize. People increasingly depend on numbers to know how they are doing for virtually everything. We measure ourselves, size, height, distance, amount, time, intelligence, popularity and even feelings. If you can number it, you can control it. We want to pause for a moment to question this number mania and to know what is going on around us, how our actions impact others, how the environment is changing and how we are changing. If we want to change what we care about, shouldn’t we change what we measure?
The collection reflects the theme in various ways; prints of little working people trying to analyze their
surroundings, oversized ribbing on knitwear that seems like it came from another measuring system, free floating paint strokes that don’t want to fit the grid in the background, prolonged button stands and sleeve slits and weave on suiting that shows measure tapes woven into the that garments. Some of the garments are developed from the starting point where pieces from earlier collection were sewn together in new scales and original measurements were swapped around.
Fifteen performers in bright yellow working outfits are controlling manually the mechanical measuring mops that analyze the bodies lying underneath. Through rhythm, sound, body movement and pulse the installation emphasizes the inspiration of the collection. It is a visualization on how people become the machine controlled by measurements.
Photos courtesy of Henrik Vibskov
