The flower lady

I like making costume but I also like wearing other people's costume, especially my friend and costume designer Yueer's creation which are always really enchanting, otherworldly and wonderfully made! 

I performed in this costume based project. It was a multimedia performance including pre-recorded material and live performance. In Yueer work, it's not like in a play where you create a costume to embody a character, it is the other way round, the narrative come from the costume and all the story revolves around it. 

A piece designed by Yueer Zhang
Director: Hao Zang
Cameraman: Xiaolong Wu
Performer: Anne Sohpie, Francesca Fox-Simmons
Costume design: Yueer Zhang
Make up: Chen Fang

We shoot the movie in two parts, first in Wimbeldon forest, then in Seven Sister Cliff near Brighton, because Yueer wanted a white background and she wanted to  experiment shooting outside and in a natural environment. 

make up on the beach or on the middle of the wood! 

Yueer putting my coat on my shoulder as soon as the scene is finish to keep me warm!

So we had to deal with climatic elements like rain in the forest, and the cold on the cliff. We probably went on the coolest day of november and I was just wearing this light white net dress  but Yueer was really careful and far-sighted and put some warming pads in the dress in order to keep the body warm. So this shooting was a kind of expedition, it was good to see the sea and escape from the city one day! This is on this beach that I found all the drift wood for the woman with the wooden limbs costume. 

I'm wearing my Vivienne Westwood boots, they a bit too small for me. I found them on a flee market for really cheap so I  absolutely wanted to buy it even if they wasn't my size. want them found them in a flee market and they are white, perfect for the mud or the sand of the beach. 

The flower dress by the costume designer "I tried to tell a story using symbolic costume. This is a test that I designed and made the costumes firstly, then created a script based on the costumes. Finally, I want to use a video to combine two parts. This is a story about Emily, who lost in her own world. In her mind, she is always controlled by someone else. She tries to imitate，follow and copy every movements of that person who actually is not exist".

I see this piece as a quest of identity in a postmodern world. A girl who can't make the difference between her fantasy and reality. She want to look like an elegant woman, by wearing the same dress She is in the illusion that if she is wearing the dress she will become this woman.

Script of the movie: 

Emily  She looks alone and helpless. She is walking and looking around, then going to a forest.

Suddenly, she sees a beautiful flower dress under the tree. She is exciting and interested into whose dress. She can not wait to take off her cloth and put the beautiful dress on.

Emily suddenly find a Lady who wears the beautiful dress walking in the forest. This is an elegant lady and walking slowly as well. Sometimes she seems to look back. Emily follows the beautiful lady, but she is also afraid the lady finds her. They are walking and walking…

Emily follows the lady to the cliff. This is a clear area without any trees, weeds and leaves. The lady looks more beautiful and the detail of the flower dress can be seen clearly. However, the lady is starting to split petals on the dress， then throw them on the ground. Emily is scared, but she is afraid to stop this. She also really wants to pick up those beautiful petals.

Emily becomes the Lady with the flower dress and split petals piece and piece. She becomes angry and rude. Her movements and her body twist ugly.

The lady splits the petals piece and piece and tears some piece. Finally, she even splits her skirt pieces, which are one part of the whole dress. She feels relax, breath deeply and calm down

During the performance, I had to pick up the petals on the floor stitch them on my dress with a safety pins, Then come back behind the black fabric and change from the white dress to the black dress during the projection of the movie.

 Fortunalty, I hade someone behind the screen with me to tell me when the movie was over and come back on stage.  Then I have to ask the audience (in French!) is they have seen the flower lady , then disappear behind the black curtain looking really disappointed.

I saw it a bit like an anti-Yoko Uno cutting piece.  In this piece performed in 1964, the artist sat kneeling on the concert hall stage, wearing her best suit of clothing, with a pair of scissors placed on the floor in front of her. Members of the audience were invited to approach the stage, one at a time, and cut a bit of her clothes off – which they were allowed to keep.

Yoko Ono: CUT PIECE Performed by Yoko Ono on July 20, 1964 at Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan. 

 Cut Piece had one destructive verb as its instruction: "Cut." I like in performance when you have some interaction with the costume or live transformation and metamorphosis, when you destroy or you add some element on it in from of an audience and not on the backstage.

 Yueer piece is both because in the movie, the flower lady tear apart the petal on the dress but on the performance Emily embellishes the dress buy adding some petal to it. But this action is not enough to make her like the flower lady, so the petals fade and become a black dress.

after the performance

the costume designer and the performer

Not another brick in the wall

LEGOMANIA IS BACK 

80's style revisited in 2013

The marketing director of Lego  explains" The success come from the fact that we never changed the original structure of the brick. Even if the themes that we offer to children and adults  change, even if we are now targeting little girl with pastel colour products, the stackable brick please the most because it makes people creative. It's an hybrid object which easily find its place is customisation era". 

Ze team 9 alford court à encore frappé! this time is Camille my other flatmate that I leverage in order to spread the  legomania! 9 Alford court power! 

 Lego is an iconic game, a point of recognition widely shared with other members of one society. it means, never having to say "What is lego?" or "I don't know what you are talking about". Icons provide common ground. They let people experience commonality, amidst diversity, shared interests, amidst conflicting ones, participation in the same broad culture amidst many subcultures.

The parking jacket 

For example, everybody share the same painful experience to wake up and to walk on the square brick!

No? no one?  

oh sorry..so it's just me….

It bring you in a surrealistic cartoon world, where everything is colour saturated and make you feel like a K-pop singer from south Korea. 

For example the band G-DRAGON and their really politically committed slogan "CATCH YOUR CRAYON. I really want to do costume design for theses people. Wearing Lego you have the same kind of motto "WHY SO SERIOUS? 

You give the opportunity  to people to experiment a different reality with it's own logic, a world were legos are attached to clothes and littles cars to jackets, your create your own conventions and because you make it possible, people just have to accept this new reality. 

You are not ugly or ugly anymore, you are the "the girl with the lego jacket". 

It obliges people to be creative, to be more inventive and renew their jokes. For example when you were the little car jacket people ask you " do you have the vehicle's documents?" And you make up a story, "no, sorry I failed twice my driving licence", and this kind of surreal conversation can just happen if you are wearing a little car jacket. 

When i'm going to BRICKlane market to buy fruit and vegetable (yes Mum i'm trying to have a balance diet), i'm like: can I have a kilo of apple? and the man shout to his colleague "A kilo of apple for the lady with the cars jacket', chop chop. 

-Yes, right now, VROUM VROUM!" 

It feed everyone creativity, everyone comment on it, bring its input, you can start talking for 10min with the cashier at the supermarket "why don't you do the same but with bicycles toys? 

me-that's a good idea, i didn't think about that, i'm going to try!" 

Boys are to be more inventive of if they want to flirt with you, they can't stick to the traditional "hey girl, you are lovely", once I had, "aver dos chaussures lego, j'ai bien envie de vows emboîter le pas" (can't translate it in english like follow your step because you're shoes are stackable). 

To stick lego on clothes I make a whole with the nails that I make white hot with my gas cooker (usually i'm doing it at the same time that i'm cooking pasta in order not to waste energy). 

Little car jacket make you your life adventurous, it make you experimenting a safari in central London!

a simple bamboo bush become a jungle

London is a rainy city, there is nothing that you can do about it, but you can always take it to the bright side and jump at the opportunity to wear lego wellington boots. 

Miss Peel, Chapeau melon et botte de cuir remake, k-way rose et bottes de caoutchouc! 

I found those boots in the street, in the garbage, this is the advantage of cycling, you can't stop whenever you want (as fast as your breaks allow you)  if you see something that catch your eye. There were covered with stupid drawing made with black marker but perfectly my size. when i came back with my trophy, my flatmate was "you are the only one who can do that..." 

It's crazy what people are throwing away, and I like to give a second chance and a second life to object  so I washed them and I covered them with legos! 

after cycle in heels, cycle in wellington boots! 

We took probably took those pictures the coldest day of the year but Lego is enough to bring the sunshine!

"j'habite dans un légo
ça me flatte l'égo
et si c'est pas légal 
moi ça m'est égal" => chorus of a song I wrote when I was a teenager and I wanted to have a band (don't know if it would have been really successful..)  

BE CAUTIOUS, I'M WEARING LEGO

Gabrielle, my poor godchildren, just 1 year old and already the victim of my crazy creations...anyway, there is no age to wear lego! 

Legos also suit animals actually i had to run after my cat Gustave, during the week following theses pictures, it was looking at me like, what this crazy girl is going to do to me again?

To obtain this result I had to shake a croquette above Gustave's head, i think I could be a good cat trainer!