“Your Pants Are My Etc”
Nicole Killian and
Savannah Knoop
“Your Pants Are My Etc” is curious through style. Originating in a collaborative dialogue between NK and SK, the objects and videos juxtaposed here follow a basic principle held dear by the avid thrift-store shopper: the garment that is chanced upon—yet is neither here nor there—holds a potentiality.
There are three instantaneous transformations of a garment for sale in a thrift store; first, the intended context—a garment’s stylistic markers of class, age, and gender—become secondary yet is never lost completely. An object, or garment, carries its story. Second, the intended body— a garment’s size and tailoring—becomes malleable through wear and tear, stretch and shrink, wrinkle and fade. Third, the intended cost— the manifestation of corporate calculations of labor and demand—is scaled down to a cost that encourages experimentation and play. The works in “Your Pants Are My Jacket” flow from this drift of branded commodity to queered potential.
Queer style: a process. Taking bits of what’s offered and imagining a new offering. Pre-packaged does not exist. Holding history’s details while allowing its structural status quo to fall away. Imagining bodies that are not standardized and do not move through the world in an understood way. To hem, cut, re-drape, dye, stretch, take in, take out, tuck, lace, fringe, flip, frump, roll, cinch, scrunch— and then to imagine the body again. The clothing stretches the body, and the body stretches the clothing — creating a space for body/object empathy.
It could be that we have never thought to put something like this on our body. It could be that we want to put our body on this garment.
