Christine Sun Kim – A Reflection

Christine speaks of translating sound into a visual, and not thinking about sound as it is usually perceived to as others hear it.

How can this be translated into my own practice? As an academic who has worked in industry and now teaches I can get very stuck sometimes in the right and the wrong. The right way to approach this, the right way to finish a particular seam or hem. When I think back to when I was studying, I was able to produce some interesting things in my first year because I was able to approach them with a brain that didn’t know ‘the right way’ to go about it; I just tried. I think it’s important to remember that when teaching, to encourage students to try and figure things out, and then if it needs refining that’s when I step in. Not at the beginning.

Christine also speaks of ‘listening with you eyes and not just your ears’.

An interesting approach to fashion could be to create through touch and not through sight. In my time so far teaching at UAL, there have been no blind or severely visually impaired students enrolled on my course. A perspective I think would be interesting to navigate, a point of view that should be considered. Blind and visually impaired people still wear clothes – in which case then tactility could become more important than visuals. How would that work in terms of teaching, demonstrations, operating machinery like sewing machines. There’s a lot of risk assessment.

I started to research in what capacity this could work and came across a video. A clothing company called Two Blind Brothers, who employ visually impaired staff to make their clothing, as well as being blind themselves; working in design and material sourcing. I need to research into this case study in more depth to see if I can find out more on the logistics of it, but its incredibly inspiring and reassuring to see its possible!