Camel Coat

Snack Syndicate

Opening 02.05.18 6-8pm
Artist Talks 24.05.18 6-7pm

Camel Coat explores the relationship between bodies, fashion, algorithmic culture and surveillance. The installation continues Snack Syndicate’s interest in the ways that bodies are regulated, mediated, and disciplined in contemporary life — following on from Little Pharma (Artspace, 2016) and Cold Cuts (Alaska Projects, 2017). Camel Coat will consider the body as it is imaged and quantified, examining the increasingly intertwined relationships between physical spaces, aesthetics and technologies of surveillance with a particular focus on the ways that fashion marks subjects as vulnerable and precarious: for example, the way wearing certain clothes is coded as dangerous, unpatriotic, threatening, or provocative. Specifically, the exhibition explores the intersection of algorithmic policing and the unsettling trend of online retailers using automated systems that mine news media to name fast fashion items such as the ‘Snowden Sweater’ and the ‘Rikers Island Yoga Pants’. The installation features custom made sweatshirts and sculptural objects that come together to examine the racial, class and gender dimensions of algorithmic culture policing and culture.