Beschreibung
Subliminal Trench-Code, performance M. Jahrmann 2013 New Delhi A form of activist role-play is expressed in the Trench Coat appropriation of the artwork „Trench-Code“ (2013). The Trenchcoat can be traced back to its origins in the Schützengraben of the Great War and was then becoming an identifier of worldwide Britishness in the colonies. Wearing a trench is in that sense already an act of role-play, putting on a symbolically charged garment. As fabric the classical Burberry is as well an icon of the subliminal power of patterns. Both aspects are combined in the use of the Trenches in an exhibition in India, New Delhi, 2013 in the Lalit Kahla Academy, which plays with the dominant power of colonialism and fashion codes. The second aspect was the playful interpretation of the pattern of the fabric as Alternate Reality code, holding inherent subliminal messages. This art project printed digitally readable Alternate Reality codes as „natural markers“ on the used – and in that sense recycled – and subversively redefined Burberrys. The conservative garment becomes the carrier of a new subversive message: You Obey!