Tina Sparkles MFA LRVS Thesis 2018
DIY Sportodezhda
Informed by the writings of design scholar Otto von Busch as well as the author’s own experience as the founder of IMMEDIATE Fashion School, this thesis refashions social and sartorial experiments of the Russian avant-garde into both a game of activism called synchronized social fashion and a uniform for the sport called a DIY Sportodezhda. The game is a radical pedagogy, artistic research quest and ongoing playtest operating independently from and with the dominant institutions of education and industry in fashion. Players create provisional teams and cooperatively build toward an unknown fashion; one that is more equitable and empowering for all players, and relies on togetherness more than competition. Stepanova, a Russian Constructivist artist working in the 1920s, conceptualized a socialist uniform for sport and game activities called Sportodezhda. This paper proposes a contemporary uniform for the sport of synchronized social fashion, a DIY Sportodezhda, made by and for everyday creative citizens who want to construct a new society in the 21st century. The DIY Sportodezhda traverses the game as an unfixed uniform, crosses through play boundaries to become a sartorial symbol in the everyday, and emerges as a constant yet always becoming friend.