AS YOU WERE was a collaboration with artist Carmel O’Brien (with Opera Autonoma) investigating our backgrounds in fashion design, architecture, painting and installation. A sustained dialogue generated a system of syntheses utilising applied surfaces, layered paint and artificial skin as means of creating hybrid garments and sculptural installations within a simulated setting.
AS YOU WERE examined analogies between military indoctrination and post-industrial manufacture in consumer culture. The installation included multi-channelled audio-visual projections that simulate a fashion show cum military drill. The projections displayed a lone figure parodying as a toy soldier marching through a scene that resembled a desert-scape or an extra-terrestrial environment. As the video progressed the lone soldier became two, three and four, eventually forming a small army.