Self-made T shirt design is a way to occupy a public space
without paying for it. It is creative, fun and intelligent way to spread
messages into the public space involving your own self as a main manager of
this particular public area. It is a minimalist way of deconstruction of the
laws of "discipline and punish", which we are all forced to live with. One can use T shirts as kind
of portal for spreading messages and saying his/her/its own opinion. Thus, the
most typical street wear becomes a social media for those who know how to use
it. It is a pop product but, through its use as a media for intervention into
the public sphere and expressing own genuine attitude it becomes an activist
tool, as well. The freedom of the individual to create its own T shirts makes them
democratic. However, such democratic paradigm that I prescribe to T shirts presupposes
democracy. It is two ways street.
Paradoxically the history of T
shirt begins with the soldier’s uniform at the end of the 19th
century before or during the I WW. T
shirts become part of the individual styling only after James Dean rebelled against
false social norms, representing the wild, young and powerful man body dressed
in a simple white T shirt. This kind of street dress went never again out of fashion.
But, in the same it time kept representing the social and lower class.
What interests me here is T shirt’s
potential for expressing individuality. Paradoxically, T shirts are in the same
time the most universal, the most unifying piece of clothing on the globe. Pop
and mega stars wear it, as well as the poorest ones, received in a form of
donation, intellectuals, artists, workers. Parallel to its global use, it has also
a global function. It is good for outdoor as well as for indoor. It can be comfortable
but also sexy. It can be for lazy days but also for working hours. Every
popular event prints its own T shirt (fresh example is the forthcoming Brazilian
football championship).
However, they continue to be our
private space for public representation of our own attitude, opinion, for
expressing our free mind. It is a space that no one can control entirely and in
this sense it is one of the most powerful tools of democracy, although,
democracy presupposes its existence. Like graffiti that we wear it on our own
body, which we can change it for another at any given moment, T shirts are media,
which are uncontrollable. The census here cannot function entirely. Thus, a
simple T shirt can be powerful political tool that always connect a concrete individual
with a concrete life situation. It resists passive TV and any other type of
consumerism and allows people to be interactive, provocative, always fresh and
awake, always conscious about their place and role in creating cultural
politics.
