fashionRIP

fashionRIP is a multidiscipline, transmedia installation of chapters, an exploration of perceptions and beliefs. It’s a platform that explores ecosystems health, generative economics, social justice, cultural and creative diversity. Starting with recycouture garments, the story became the Project. It is now an evolving experiment, designed to explore meaningful relationship based constructs that put human potential and whole systems health over the abstract ideas of faux "the real world."

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Vintage and Handmade

vintage garden print courtesy Dolly Rocker

Dolly Rocker is a vintage clothier and upcycler out of Detroit. While a lot of new press is going to the urban gardeners -good news, indeed -it should also pay attention to the material recyclers and innovators of the urbanscape. The street up movement is not just about the food. That is important but "we are more than mouths to feed." (Arcade Fire

We need to change the old industrial growth model simply because infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible. The early economists and theorists started a system that can't self correct because the policies and path are self informing.

Jump off the train and practice being mindful, questioning, curious, caring, compassionate, in the moment, creative... be human.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Frack U

Frack-U wear-note the stove.
Transitions take time but when new choices become available
please do the research and choose for
the future you want. We really are in this together. x

Photo from Dolly Rocker Vintage and handmade.

A real life horror story is going on underground. The chemical toxins that are released in the air and water from the process known as fracking, are more dangerous than the nuclear issue because they have few restrictions. The government sold us out. This kind of insanity is hard to comprehend. Please see the documentary by Josh Fox called "Gasland." Look to the slide feature under the map, "What the Frack?" for a synopsis of the practice. The life of this planet may depend on it & we haven't much time left to get it right. *>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>* .............................................................................................................................................................. Then meet up with friends and neighbors and do something. Tack flyers on "phone" poles, petition Congress to view a documentary a week (your selection), stop buying/using natural gas appliances when possible. Seek solar and wind options, learn as much as possible in order to help yourself, which also helps others. When truth propels progress, we all win. Putting the energy we have as a collective intelligence matters to the Universe, just as much or more, than the great independent thoughts that play in our heads. Transcending practiced and or feigned ignorance is part of natural evolution. *..................................................................................................................................................................... The WaterRIP chapter of fashionRIP Project has found its story.

Friday, April 15, 2011

cool kids

see following entry for the explaination!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Real Girl

The dress form is from the book "The Best Camera is the One You Have With You" by J. Chase, selected, copied, desaturated and retouched with paint courtesy of Photoshop. Background is AZ sky in July.

Juxtapoz has a great zine out on street art. This aligns with the MOCA exhibit "Art in the Streets." I went online to get more info, and found that I was being prompted to update my IE browser to Chrome. "I'm sorry myApi login is currently not compatible with Internet Explorer. Download Chrome, that's what all the cool kids are using"

I feel like retching. Corporate America should keep its claws off the kids. Corporations are designed without a conscience - yet they have the rights of human beings (1886). This has allowed them to focus on profits as they step over the casualties. Enabled by government policies to grow into ever bigger, more powerful, profit generating systems, they now can bully entire populations, entire nations. This is wrong.

Working on a child's emotional need to connect to their peers, is an unethical marketing tactic, but then ethics are not measured on the bottom line. The toxic stew we now swim in, is made of emotional, environmental, social and economic toxins- all interrelate, all matter and its time to change the recipe!

Speak up America, it isn't too late to change this course of madness. healthy idea cultivars are springing up all over, but they need support, help...find a group-they need you.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Dirt Lives

There is more life under the soil than on top. Now who thinks of that? From the book "Ecology- A Pocket Guide" by Callenbach, E)

The problem of not understanding life from other than the anthrocentric viewpoint means we are not able to make well informed decisions about our lives. We truly are here because we live in a great organic, interractive realm that has evolved through centuries. It's a crime against life , nature and our own creativity-to behave in a myopia. The USA form of capitalism evolved from an antique world vision that is uber short sighted, egomaniacal and ethically compromised - it is jeopardizing the whole and that kind of stupid is not tolerable. (reductionist science, industrial modeling, free trade that is forcing small farmers from the land while GMO soybeans and corn crops are grown, stifling diversity and economic equity, more)

We have been scammed big time by a set of laws that became systems that became "too big to fail" and "too complicated" to easily understand. But we must embark on that journey. Our lives and the lives of other species are at stake. The balance of nature, the energy and resource cycles are all at risk, for as species collapse they take other things down with them.

Dirt Lives (working title) is about teaching ourselves and each other -we can be the cure, the heroes. (fashionRIP Project changes to adapt to the environment, people didn't get the Connected concept.)

Why it Matters

What's the matter with more and more fashion choices?

It sounds good; we love to be able to pick the perfect outfit. You wear it once or twice and then ....what was the real cost here?

Your time to shop and the money spent, not so much ....go a little deeper and consider the fiber source, the dyes and chemicals used, the health toll on the workers, the energy to run the machines, the transporting carbons...and now it just takes up closet space. But so what? It's been going on for-almost-ever and you didn't make the rules.

In fact we are told this is what a "healthy" economy looks like.

You will recycle it after all, give it to charity or your sister. This is more transportation and more release of those greenhouse gases. We are using a lot of our personal energy and the resources of this planet to make, use and dump "trash" Some rags, remnants and tawdry bits will molder for eons in landfills, as nature's microbial actions are hampered by our normalized, everyday toxic lifestyles.

This goes beyond dumps as the breakdown cycle that nourishes the life of this planet has been sorely challenged by GMO crops, fertilizers, pesticides, antimicrobials..RIGHT!!. All the "living better through chemistry" propaganda after WWI and II- AKA how to sell your "garbage," is our legacy. Well no more, not on my (our) watch, we are seeing things quite differently.

As we now carry 298 toxins in our bods that weren't there in the 1930s the toxic residues of normal are haunting us more and more. Ironic, no? Advanced is merely a word.

Go to the So Whats the Point blog in February for the numbers.

fashionRIP posts are copr at time of posting thank you

Extinctions ...So What?

Life evolves, some species survive some don't. We like to allude to Darwin's "natural selection" or Herbert Spencer's "survival of the fittest" because we are so good at reproducing and taking over this planet and justifying that side of our natures. The fact that we are wiping out the food chain by destroying habitat, fouling air and water and generally behaving like arrogant, tinkering idiots, is called business as usual. .....Well I and others are no longer buying that "sell."

We are wising up to the idea that we too, are dependent on these resources. We too, are physically an organic species and we really don't know what little extinction will be the start of the chain reaction that collapses the structure that we too, are dependent on.

Is this the price we are willing to pay for a pair of plastic shoes?

I say no, that despite the focus on the physical, we are more. We are heart and soul, mind, body, spirit. We are born of stars and we can and will leap over this world view based in old, untrue beliefs led by a science of isolation and religions of patriarchal, hierarchical constructs (your basic dominating Dad- with self reflective rights to rule). It is time to come together and heal. To transition into our fuller expectations and open the new possibilities. We are born with genius...let us help each other get to where we all can shine.