Art in Fashion Meets Espionage as Footwear Goes Undercover
When is a shoe, not a shoe? When it’s a micro-engineered geopolitical weapon, of course. Fashion Space Gallery’s current exhibition, Laboratory 12, showcases a fascinating, if somewhat unsettling, collection of conceptual footwear designed by its first ever design resident, Benjamin John Hall, in collaboration with a team of architectural, CAD and 3D printing specialists. His rather unlikely starting point? The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko.
Laboratory 12 refers to the KGB-run lab responsible for developing polonium - the colourless, tasteless, odourless poison identified as the cause of Litvinenko’s death. With this project, Hall, who describes himself as part shoe maker, part inventor, explaining that “footwear has become a natural medium for me to express ideas,” tackles an ambitious pair of seemingly unrelated aims with undaunted verve - challenging contemporary notions of footwear whilst highlighting the precariousness of contemporary world politics.
The exhibition presents seven pairs of shoes, each named for a different espionage technique, accompanied by video installations in which Hall and his team explain the processes involved in the designs’ conceptual and physical development (and, of course, showcase the more ‘explosive’ varieties in action). Hall’s designs explore “the extent to which governments potentially could - or already are - securing their best interests in a current global political and economic environment marked by uncertainty”.
So, are government ministers investing in SMS-activated noxious odour-emitting footwear technology for the purposes of inculcating paranoia in their opponents? Perhaps not, but we know that the gradual corrosion (or ‘zersetzung’) of an enemy’s psychological fortitude via the fabrication and manipulation of everyday trials and tribulations was one of the Stasi’s favoured methods of covert warfare. In designing the Zersetzung shoe, Hall aimed to “open up ideas about susceptibility to outside influence” - for example, how aware are you of, and how much are your opinions formed by, the ways in which your Facebook feed is controlled?
Whilst many of the shoes on display are more conceptual than functional, it’s those Hall terms ‘operational objects’ which are most intriguing, from the catwalk-ready gunpowder fuse-trimmed Kompromat wedges (detonated from a distance of up to 20 metres by the alarmingly innocuous action of crushing a previously doctored Coke can) to the vibrating Japanese geta-style Geiger sandals, which alert their wearer to perilous radiation spikes. Political leader? Time to embrace the flatform (the chunkier the sole, the more space for lifesaving tech). Professional honey trapper? Why not try a hollow heel (well, where else are you going to stow those precious ‘samples’…)?
Hall’s unique fusion of art, science and fashion transcends the boundaries of its constituent disciplines to raise questions which strike at the heart of the issues inherent in technology’s ever-increasing agency over our lives. Impossibility is fast becoming obsolete. Last year’s science fiction is this year’s reality. And if it’s mind boggling to contemplate the results which Hall, assisted by just a handful of colleagues, has managed to achieve in just a few months, how can we even begin to imagine what might be taking place in those shadowy government-funded laboratories? “There is a theory that states are like organisms - similar to Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest - if they’re not actively growing, they’re actively diminishing,” Hall muses. “How far should or would your government go to secure its best interests? Rules can easily be bent… We think we live in a democracy where there is right and wrong and laws to abide by but, unfortunately, they don’t apply to everyone.” Perhaps we could all stand to benefit from a healthy dose of paranoia, after all. Not to mention a radiation-detecting summer sandal.
Words: Samantha Simmonds
Laboratory 12 is at Fashion Space Gallery, London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes Street, London W1G 0BJ, until 16th July 2016 (10am-6pm Monday-Friday, 12pm-4pm Saturday term time). Entry is free.
http://www.fashionspacegallery.com
