The ARACNE project celebrates the cultural heritage of silk and the strong traditional bond between humans and insects, even though silk production involves the sacrifice of the insect at the end of its life. However, the Aracne partnership does not shy away from engaging with other ways of thinking and other sensibilities. For this reason, we were glad to collaborate with the “Laboratoria Serica” group, which, using materials provided by CREA, carried out research of a stylistic and ethical nature. Below we publish the results of their work and their message, available in the project documentation:
– Falenopoli Fanzine
– Falenopoli Lookbook
“Laboratoria Serica is a research group established within the Master programme in Fashion at the IUAV University of Venice. They are developing a fashion collection that explores alternative approaches to the relationship between humans and silkworms. The complexities of this cross-species relationship stem from the industrialisation of the silk production chain; the group analyses its impact on ecosystems, bodies and processes.
They collaborate with CREA to source cocoons, and through a home-based degumming process, a fibre is extracted. Subsequently, through felting processes, they create fabrics suitable for fashion design.
As a creative collective, they imagine new ways of using silk and creating fashion, taking a radical stance against the exploitation of non-human beings. They are committed to a renewed multispecies world, based on collaboration between species. Becoming-animal is a movement towards non-human intensities that permeate the subject in an assemblage of novelty, a stratification of cultural meanings upon the body”.
A research by:
- Rebecca Costa r.costa4@stud.iuav.it
- Alessia Gjini a.gjini1@stud.iuav.it
- Giulia Malatesta giulia.malatesta2000@gmail.com
- Michele Morando morandomichele01@gmail.com
- Aria Princigalli aria.princigalli@gmail.com
- Tia Quaglia tia.quagliaa@gmail.com
