JOIN Collective Clothes
with Scheltens & Abbenes
Exhibition at Eight Cubic Meters

Location: Sint Nicolaasstraat, Amsterdam
1 July – 22 September 2020
Open 24/7

Click here for a visual overview of the exhibition.

JOIN Collective Clothes, the ongoing project by designer Anouk Beckers, wraps up a year of workshops and events that revolve around collectively creating garments.
From 1 July – 22 September, JOIN will present itself at Eight Cubic Meters, the outdoor gallery of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the city centre of Amsterdam. The gallery’s eight publicly accessible vitrines – reminiscent of shop windows – will display pieces from the collective collection in a series of images created by renowned photographers duo Scheltens & Abbenes.

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, JOIN Collective Clothes will present the collection in the streets of Amsterdam. On Monday 6 July 2020, 18:30h, a live performance will take place throughout the main shopping street in the city centre. Over 30 models: workshop participants, makers, designers and friends of JOIN will present JOIN pieces from the collective collection to the public. The safe-distance choreography is created by Lunatics and Poets, the performance is styled by Pieter Eliëns. JOIN us via the livestream at @join_collective_clothes.

JOIN Collective Clothes is an ongoing design and research project that playfully questions the fashion system by exploring fashion as a collective practice. The fundament of the project is a modular clothing system that consists of four different shapes which can be combined into a full outfit (a sleeve, a top, a trouser leg and a part of a skirt). An easy-to-use open source manual, designed by Beau Bertens, invites people to get started in creating their own garment. Anyone can participate by choosing one of these shapes and making their own JOIN piece which can eventually be connected to a piece made by another maker. Regardless of location and experience, either working from home, or participating in one of the JOIN workshops, JOIN creates the possibility to come together, share ideas and experiment with form, texture, technique and material.

Over the last year JOIN successfully organised workshops at various places – from cultural institutions De Appel, Museum Arnhem, Dordrechts Museum, studio bonbon at fanfare; festivals Dutch Design Week and Fashionclash to stores like Capsicum. Additionally, Anouk commissioned design professionals to contribute to the JOIN collective collection. Designers include Anouk van Klaveren, Christa van der Meer, Dewi Bekker & Gino Anthonisse (Das Leben am Haverkamp), Camiel Fortgens & Tanja Bindels, Eduardo Leon (Avoidstreet), Elisa van Joolen, Iris de Leeuw, Lisa Konno and SCHUELLER DE WAAL.

JOIN Collective Clothes currently consists of more than 120 pieces from different makers with various professions and levels of experience. Together, the pieces form a series of garments that encapsulate an explorative and collaborative process of garment design and making:
a collective collection. 

In the exhibition at Eight Cubic Meters, the photographs of Scheltens & Abbenes present a selection of JOIN pieces in landscapes of abstract geometric shapes. The images show how the various makers - commissioned designers are combined with results from the JOIN workshops - use the JOIN patterns differently. Their personal choices coming to the surface in form, texture, technique and material, showing the endless possibilities within the modular JOIN system. Together the images present the main goal of the project; exploring the relation between various disciplines and professions, the individual maker and the collective, the commissioned designer and the workshop participant.

JOIN Collective Clothes identity by Beau Bertens. 
Graphic design by Zuzana Kostelanská. 
Project assistance by Ilse Bloemendal, Seok Park and Zoe Philine Pingel.