Loes' Fabricademy Documentation
This my documentation blog for the Fabricademy Course of 2019. I'm participating from Amsterdam with Fab Lab Waag as my local lab.
About me
Hi! I am Loes Bogers (not me in the pic though).
I live in Rotterdam, but I'm from lovely Southern city Eindhoven, and I work in Amsterdam. My work home is the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences where I work as a researcher at the Visual Methodologies Collective, and coordinator and educator of a semester course on (critical) making and digital fabrication.
I’m currently working on a book project with Letizia Chiappini and Geert Lovink called the Critical Maker’s Reader: (Un)Learning Technology. It's an edited volume that addresses questions around contemporary critical making. What might making become after the recent death knell of MAKE magazine, its maker faires and the maker movement they envisioned? What was making before? What could it become? The reader will come out as a printed book and open access ePub, and will be published by the Institute of Network Cultures in November 2019. I work with students on related practices and topics in the interdisciplinary semester course Makers Lab: Making as Research that I developed with Shirley Niemans.
Back in 2015...
I know Shirley back from when I did the Fabacademy in 2015. It put a lot of nice projects in motion for us and led to a great friendship! My final project was a toy for wunderkammers, that I loved making and am still proud of because of all the work and learning that went into it. I also feel quite ambivalent about it now, because it was such a self-indulgent thing to create in a way. At the same time the skills I learned were invaluable, and the process has shaped my thinking on the meaning of making and the kind of knowledge created by developing intimate knowledge of tools, materials and general craftsmanship.
This year, I'm able to join the Fabricademy with the generous support of my university. There's recently been a great interest in practices that could be called critical making, and we're looking to expand our research and education more specifically toward critical making in the context of the fashion industry. What would be a better place to get started than here? This truly is a bucket list moment for me <3.
Why fabricademy?
Well, it's kind of all the things I love combined! I enjoy learning and a bit of a challenge, and the things I could practice here could be a leg-up for a larger personal project I have in mind in collaboration with a terrific community of innovative performers. But we'll see.
And as I said it also directly ties in with some current developments at the local university where I teach and am involved in research on critical making. I'd love bringing the wealth of knowledge generated by the people here to students and colleagues like I've done after finishing Fabacademy.
##Some related previous work
I have a BA in Media and Cultural Studies and a MA in Interactive Media: Critical Theory & Practice. I'm definitely a bit of a hybrid practitioner and a large part of me is bookish and researchy, but I very much enjoy this combination. I know about areas of (digital) media, electronics, some coding, and digital fabrication. Although I've sewn my own clothes I don't have much fashion in my background besides a 32-year for vintage clothes and dressing up unapologetically whether there's an occasion or not. The projects I have done tend to deal with gender, embodiment, data and some kind of politics. Here's a few:
Movement-moving machines
This is a project where I looked into dance systems and dynamics of music, spaces and touch. I hacked two pair of tap dancing shoes to make a sound system that can be turned on and off as people touch or let go. The start of my love affair with electronics!
Dancecoding
During a residency at Kitchen Budapest, I did this dancecoding project with local contact improvisation dancers and the developers of Fluxus: a livecoding language used for performative programming. We did a week of dancecoding jams to explore formats, techniques and modes of collaboration during arts exhibition SZOB|A|R|T.
The Body Recovery Unit
I founded the Body Recovery Unit with Alexandra Joensson. BRU is an arts-based feminist research group that works with healthcare practitioners, activists and community groups in London to look at the ways in which logics and demands of data-driven health care reform impact the body, everyday practices and relationships on UK maternity wards. More info here
Subversive Methods-Time-Measurement Party Outfit
Earlier this year I joined Hackers & Designers: an initiative that attempts to break down the barriers between the two fields by enforcing a common vocabulary through education, hacks and collaboration. One of the first projects I worked on with them was the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy on the theme of Coded Bodies where we did loads of experiments with different technologies and how they relate to our understanding and experience of the body.
One of the things I really enjoyed working on was this party outfit I made with Anja Groten & Julliette Lizotte during Erik Overmeire's workshop on wearables. It was inspired by Kajsa Dahlberg's fantastic film Reach, Grasp, Move, Position, Apply Force (2014-2015), about the bodily regimes and Methods-Time-Measurement systems in the context of Amazon fulfilment centers. Highly recommended.
Bioqueening
OK so this is totally a hobby but something I've been obsessed with for a long time. I'm a bit of a bioqueen/drag king when I can find the time, with friends and colleagues or whoever wants to join. I think the innovative ways of thinking about the malleability and unstable nature of the body and gender is super interesting and made me fall in love with this art form. No RuPaul quote is lost on me (she'd done already done had herses - and you know it). I'd love to take as many assignments as possible and take it towards the art of drag to develop into a larger project later.
Inspiration
lizan freijsen erik overmeire's koraalproject allerlei frutsels op textiel borduren recycling kit met gouddraad alles van kobakant
bauhaus couture hahaha go big or go home color changing pigment
house of holographic hoes voorbeelden van rupaul bart hess aynouk tan
radical matter zeroes and ones fringe folding structures superstructures book
updated index page