Imagining Neutopia
Dressing for Evacuation is the first project in a series of works titled Imagining Neutopia.
Post-apocalyptic fiction, film and TV often portrays characters dressed in outfits that require either specialist craft skills or high tech production, and yet if humanity survived a global cataclysmic event, it is hard to imagine a rapid return to factory produced performance fabrics or even widespread capabilities for simple hand woven, naturally dyed or leather-worked garments. When considering dystopian futures, it may be more likely that human survivors would dress in pre-owned and found clothes mended as required, with new garments created through the reworking of existing clothes and fabrics.
Through a fictional scenario the project offers insight into the human emergency response of getting dressed and gathering a limited selection of possessions. Participants were asked to dress as if they had been alerted to an imminent large-scale evacuation, responses were recorded in a photoshoot and accompanying survey.
The portraits demonstrate what clothes and objects may be accessible and deemed essential or useful by participants in the event of a major disaster. The research outcomes provide experiential information for a wider discourse around preparing for climate change related emergency evacuations.