AA VISITTING SCHOOL – CUSTOM AND CUSTOMISATION

Disciplines that seek to construct or influence an image of the body such as hairdressing, tailoring, and tattooing, have been selected for investigation. These practices promise an alteration to the body image that is negotiated between the practitioner and the customer at the site of a single chair – the context for the enactment of a design-make process, with the body used as a canvas, and a functional environment staged uniquely for a professional practice.

Students’ projects will seek to articulate the spatial and performative logic of one of the three aforementioned disciplines. A hairdresser, a tailor, and a tattooist have been invited to demonstrate and explain their tools, techniques, and the staging of their working environment.

The workshop will unfold in two parts: (1) the development of a script or proposal based on observations and analysis, and (2) the development of a project, informed by the proposal or script, that results in a temporary environment expressing the functional and artistic logic of one of the three disciplines chosen here to embody the practice of bodily customisation.

The outcome of this School is the production of customised working environments. Students are required to customise the selected exhibition space for a hairdresser, a tailor and a tattooist to work synchronously among themselves and with invited participants. They will test and exhibit their projects at Cho Why, a restored two-storey shophouse located in a crumbling street off the popular Charoenkrung area, near Hua Lamphong station. Cho Why, the Chinese designation for old-style convenience stores and corner shops, was founded by a crew of creatives who transformed the formerly deserted building into a vibrant node within Bangkok Chinatown’s arts community. Cho Why has plenty of raw appeal: a narrow wooden staircase, unpolished wooden floors, exposed beams, folding doors, and a roof terrace that overlooks the everyday life of Soi Nana 17.