Caryn Simonson + Cécile Emmanuelle Borra
Caryn Simonson, Les Revenants (Skräddarna)
The old homestead wherein eleven children were born and raised along with other generations of tailors.
Culture trail through wooded land to the remnants of a tailor’s house on Orust.
Bolts of cloth carried to the town to measure up bespoke suits.
Representation of the islanders documented through body measurements.
Evidence of scattered fashion plates from Paris as inspiration.
Cécile Emmanuelle Borra, BESPOKE
Featuring and in order of performance:
The King: J-B aka Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte as Karl XIV Johan and as Charles III John
The Opera Singer: Iva Pacetti as Norma
The Tailors and Opera Singers: Charlotte and Georges Borra as “Georges Borra, Dames et Messieurs”
The New Generation: Albert, Suzanne and Bernard as The Influencers
The Artist: Kjartan Slettemark as Poodle
It could be that connection to another, deeper world is most easily experienced by artists. But really, anyone who’s ever meditated, prayed, studied the stars, cooked an important meal for people they love, thrown a punch, received one, built something with their hands, learned a skill because they had no choice, been in service to others, volunteered their time, found themselves at the edge of their sanity or at the edge of their experience, accepted a difficult truth, put themselves second, genuinely gone out of their way for somebody else, has felt it. Connection is not the sole domain of artists, but art is a good way of understanding the fruit of that other place where commonality begins.’ — Kae Tempest, On Connection (2020) London: Faber
We are from several generations of tailors from the city of Pau in the South West of France and from the rural island of Orust on the west coast of Sweden. Charlotte and ‘Alma’ Justina shared invisible labour behind the label — Charlotte as maker and Alma as farmer. Like Charlotte, Alma had to settle for invisible labour, her occupation marked on her gravestone as ‘Hustrun’ (the housewife) whilst her husband was titled ‘Skräddaren’ (the tailor).
Along the way, through our collaboration, we had fun running away with our ideas, then reigning them back in and settling for the visible.
Video calls and flipped screens via Whatsapp
simultaneous working
on images on our computers
Layers of tech screens and cameras opened up windows
into each of our worlds….
moments of considered distraction
connecting the dots as they appeared
in the far layer of our living spaces,
bringing background into foreground
time, space and environments collapsing into our collaboration.
Allowing our connections to run riot.
