fake_fashion_agency – Faking Means Making: Vestimentary Tactics of Self-Empowerment
To fake something, I have to understand it. For a fake to succeed I must know the form and content as well as the use of a thing. When did a forgery succeed? It was not successful until it was exposed as a forgery and it is clear that it works, that is, has successfully cheated. The joke that results is that of the trickster, the player and the impostor. Stealing a certain identity, the specific understanding of originality. But what happens if I use this stealing tactically for myself? Or if it is strategically exploited by those who are otherwise cheated? Who is the loser, who can only win? What is the price, why is this game so sexy? Can the rules of the game be set up differently? Could we recapture the sardonic grin? Or would we rather want a mischievous, secret giggle without that bland sense of glee? Do we want to free ourselves or harm? Is this fight without a loser? Who are we fighting against?
The German customs destroyed 70,000 shoes (fight: brand piracy). Patent rights try to establish intellectual, designed property (law: design protection). Labels fake themselves and bargain for attention (fashion: Deisel). Youtube explains the detection of counterfeits. And Youtube shows the making of counterfeits (Media: Tutorials). Three stripes could be sewn on in the GDR itself (culture: Trettmann). The seemingly genuine is becoming more and more genuine in the global mountain village (ideology: Shanzhai).
Using these examples, the paper tries to condense, complicate and duplicate the questions raised above. Countless answers are thereby made possible, the one truth be avoided. Based on the fashion-theoretical concept of fashion-agency (Venohr 2008), a fundamental cultural-critical discussion of the case examples will be presented, both a personal artistic and a possible youth-pedagogical practice of productive counterfeiting.
