The project Socialdress, spanning over several years, was conceived by Marija Mojca Pungerčar in 2006, when the first workshops took place as part of the project. According to the artist, “the term ‘social dress’ denotes clothing that functions as an integrative element in the sense of community. The Socialdress workshops spread knowledge about clothes-making, at the same time strengthening awareness about the consequences of globalization for the domestic textile industry and about the disappearance of craft skills and knowledge. At the workshops, humorous and functional clothing is produced that is easy to make. An important aspect of the workshops is communication – the exchange of stories and experience.” In 2007, the project Socialdress was presented at the exhibition Thread at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška. The core of the project was represented by the Fashion Fabric Socialdress Dezen 01 Graz & Ljubljana, in the technique of industrial print on cotton fabric, printed in a pattern consisting of photographs and statements from participants of the artist’s previous project (Socialdress, 2006). The fabric, available for purchase at 8,99 EUR during the exhibition, was the artist’s innovative intervention into that segment of art history which ­– through its accessible price and a particular seriality, on top of which whose “controllers” are the buyers themselves (as the length of the purchased fabric is in their hands) – is similar to multiples. The artistic value of the fabric is gradated through a series of wall paintings, which are humorously available in three sizes: L (Large), M (Medium) and S (Small). The paintings differ from the clothes in that they are only available in two copies per each size.

The project Socialdress by the Metre, designed as an integrated work of art, did not end with wall paintings. At the time of the exhibition Thread, but also later, the artist organized workshops in which participants sewed their desired pieces of clothing or accessories using the fashion fabric Socialdress Dezen 01 Graz & Ljubljana. This segment of the art project Socialdress by the Metre, with which the artist gives the artwork a functional value and makes it accessible to a broader audience, is an inventive characterization of one important feature, or one of the aspirations, of pluralistic contemporary art production.

Adapted from a text by Maja Škerbot