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Beyond Western fashion sustainability: A case study of the Bahraini, Arab Gulf context
Full text linkAs the countries of the Arab Gulf aspire to construct viable post-oil economies, sustainability is becoming a strategic priority for governments in the region. This study explores Design for Sustainability (DfS) within the Bahraini fashion context, addressing existing frameworks within DfS in relation to the country’s cultural and socio-political specificities. Despite Bahrain’s distinct economic and social dynamics compared to its Gulf neighbours, its deep cultural and political commonalities with them render much of the work applicable to the wider region.
This research aims to explore how Bahrain’s culture influences approaches to fashion sustainability. It has two key objectives: first, to assess the Bahraini fashion industry against key DfS frameworks, including the limitations of fashion’s transformative potential in Bahrain; and second, to examine how Bahrain’s context, as a post-colonial and neo-colonial society, can contribute insights to the field of DfS.
Since the research focuses on the social, material and behavioural transitions required to move towards fashion sustainability it uses a methodology that engages numerous stakeholders in the Arab country, including government representatives, social activists, consultants, designers, craft communities, and consumers. This study’s multi-method approach consists of three methods: (1) a Delphi study with 16 researchers, businesspeople, civil servants and activists (2) a series of 19 qualitative semi-structured interviews with local designers, tailors, social and environmental activists, weavers and my grandmothers and (3) participant observation, which included field notes of a workshop with 22 local designers.
The research explores fashion ontologies in Bahrain derived from local epistemes. It does so by looking at language, space, relationships, and lived experiences as components of fashion ontology, and reflecting on how these impact DfS in fashion. Key findings of this research include three essential factors for fashion sustainability in Bahrain. The first is transitioning culturally towards fashion sustainability, in a way beyond individual consumer choice and decision-making (e.g., such as sustainable fashion purchases) and towards socially transformative practices. The second is growing local production through an empowered labour force; one that can creatively respond to local needs. The third is the need for public infrastructure for the end-of-life stage of garments.
Key findings of this research include a blurred cycle model, where I put forward that the categories of source, make, use and last – traditionally used in fashion sustainability research – are blurred in the Gulf context. I supplement this idea of a blurred lifecycle with a discussion of use in the fashion Gulf context. The Gulf experience of fashion reveals blurring of use and make in the practice of tailoring, for instance, and a blurring of source and use in the social practice of indoore or nitmasha (go around, walk around) in the mall, to window-shop, shop and socialise.
The chapters of this thesis comprise an introduction, followed by a critical literature review, a discussion of its methodology and three results chapters. The last chapter concludes with a discussion of key contributions to the fields of fashion sustainability, DfS, transnational fashion and Gulf cultural studies
Ash and Decomposition: Connecting Intangible Transnational Narratives by Means of Camera, Colour and Affordances
Full text linkThis paper explores the use of camera, colour, and process to provoke a stateless,timeless connectivity between intangible narratives of the past with the present, seeding the future. The presentation examines the process underlying the work of Indian street photographer, Tikam Chand and use of his third generation 1860 shutterless Carl Zeiss Jena box camera; and the creation of ‘virtual images’ using the colour black as the ‘other’ by Moroccan born, Touhami Ennadre. Both works informing the process of an auto-ethnographic approach combining the use of a medium format camera and inherited post-colonial transnational media to explore intangible memories
Covid Day of Reflection: From The Frontline
No full textAs Governments issued stay-at-home orders, our 'key workers' carried on. At the frontline of the pandemic were the healthcare professionals who saw their lives change dramatically as hospitals were transformed overnight.
Dedicated to these healthcare professionals, From the Frontline film is re-released as part of the Covid-19 Day of Reflection.
Five years ago we co-created this film with healthcare workers on both sides of the Atlantic, filmed remotely during the first wave of lockdowns in 2020. We were concerned that the relentless 24-hour news cycle would erase their stories. This film, a time capsule captured the raw and compelling testimonies of how healthcare workers harnessed the power of creative expression to document and make sense of their lives on the frontline.
From the Frontline asks what value we place on healthcare professionals, on creative expression and on life itself.
Five years on, the filmmakers try to capture viewers feedback on their memories of the pandemic and healthcare professionals at the time.
From the Frontline is a collaboration between the University of Arts London, Anglia Ruskin University, Brunel University of London, NHS colleagues in the UK and healthcare practitioners from the USA
Anagram of Unraveling Narratives: Animated Documentary as Embodied Knowledge
Full text linkArtist Kim Noce reflects on UNravel, a participatory animation project interweaving Nepalese textile craft, augmented reality and women’s stories. Drawing on feminist, decolonial and materialist thought, the piece takes the form of a visual-textual anagram, where tapestry, animation and documents become a method of thinking, feeling, and knowing
Let’s get Phygital: Optimising hybrid retail
No full textIntroduction to the Phygital section of the book written by the section editors
Positioning for Purpose: Mapping brand strategy to sustainable design
No full textThis paper presents ‘Positioning for Purpose’, a five-week undergraduate studio project that introduces Graphic Communication Design students to brand strategy as a mechanism for environmental sustainability. Run at Central Saint Martins in collaboration with marketing firm FreshBritain, through the project students learn how to use Jungian archetypes to reposition mainstream consumer brands towards ‘net positive’ futures. Emphasising enquiry-led learning, the commercial partner works alongside the students as a mentor, supporting them as they try out brand positioning methods for the first time. Findings reflect strong uptake of social justice themes, but highlight the barriers students face when tackling climate justice within brand design. While not all student outcomes prioritise environmental sustainability, the project broadens awareness of sustainable design and opens career pathways into brand strategy. The paper reflects on pedagogical benefits, limitations, and opportunities for further alignment between creative education and sustainability imperatives
Wearing nightlife: Affective fashion and musical embodiment
No full textThis paper explores the relationship between fashion, music and nightlife as a site of affective and embodied experience. It seeks to extend existing work around fashion and popular music to consider how dress and sound work in tandem to produce specific ways of feeling, moving and relating in nightlife contexts, as well as how this goes on to shape subsequent forms of creative practice.
Fashion is not only visual, nor music is not solely auditory. Both operate as affective forces which co-construct the experience of nightlife. They generate atmosphere and produce shared intensities which are felt through and within the body, creating affective states that are embodied rather than explicitly articulated.
The paper examines how fashion practices emerging from club culture continue to engage music as a central force within their design process. It considers how references to the sight, sound and smell of nightlife help to shape the emotional tone of fashion collections, through styling, design and performance.
It argues that, through the tactile and material qualities of fashion, fashion design can conjure up the feeling of a specific club culture. Through its tactility and sensual capacities, it reanimates the fleeting sensations of nightlife in the present, transforming memory and feeling into the tangible. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to broader conversations in fashion, performance and popular music studies around affect, embodiment and the sensory dimensions of cultural participation
Colouring In: An attempt at polyvocal publishing
No full textMany writers and academics have commented on the relative paucity of theoretically grounded writing in illustration over the past decades (Triggs 2000, Poynor 2010, Bogart 2018). Recently a number of new platforms and initiatives have galvanised more scholarly work and new discursive spaces are being created to reflect on the discipline. In an editorial for this journal illustration historian Jaleen Grove describes these exciting developments as the ‘Theoretical Turn’ of illustration (2018:181). Barriers to contribute to these discussions however are persistent and lead to academic blindspots. As a result there is a risk that emergent discursive spaces remain exclusionary and insular.
Colouring In is the name of a collaborative research and publishing project by Stephanie Black and Luise Vormittag that aims to include a broader range of voices in this process of theorising our discipline. The project, initiated in 2020, aims to generate new knowledge about the potential of illustration practice to make meaningful contributions to issues of critical importance to global debates. Rather than presenting our findings to date as a theoretical argument, this article reports and reflects on the different methods we have used in pursuing this inquiry, methods that we hope are enabling a greater range of perspectives to come to the fore.
Based on the principles of dialogic exchange, an attitude of receptive generosity, and the drive to utilise these in the pursuit of a shared, persistent, iterative quest for clarification, Colouring In has enabled contributions from illustrators and people with other kinds of expertise at different stages of their career. This article captures and scrutinises how we have assembled these polyvocal publications. This is to reflect on how illustration research is done, not just what people are arguing, and whether there are ways to improve it so that principles and methods align
Assembloid Agency: Unreal Engine API for brain-on-a-chip platforms
Full text linkAssembloid Agency proposes an open-source Unreal Engine API for interfacing with brains-on-chips (Amirifar et al. 2022), where the API mediates between living neurons cultured on high-density microelectrode arrays and simulated game environments. Building on “Organoid Array Computing: The Design Space of Organoid Intelligence” (Leung, Loewith, and Frisch 2025), which speculates on a future where three-dimensional brain cultures assemble into more complex cognitive infrastructures and hence may become increasingly ‘designable’ and ‘playable’ organisms (Bongard and Levin 2021).
We extend this design space to apply games-design principles to context engineering for organoid intelligence, treating organoids as polycomputational agents trained through reinforcement learning (Smirnova et al. 2023). Our proposed plugin exposes functions for stimulation, recording, visualization, and real-time control of neuronal cultures within Unreal Engine. This allows researchers to prototype experimental contexts rapidly, whether using biological wetware, spiking neural networks, or EEG stand-ins. Game templates will be built on Unreal’s Learning Agents plugin to support single- and multi-organoid training scenarios.
Theoretically, the API acts as a mediating membrane where biological and algorithmic agencies “contaminate” each other (Parisi 2013), dissolving model/reality divides and enabling distributed cognition across neurons, code, and simulated space (Hutchins 1996). We address risks such as value capture by incorporating reward-schema versioning, rotating reward schedules, and stress monitoring (Nguyen 2024).
Assembloid Agency embraces the dual embodiment of biological intelligence. Here, “assembloid” refers to assembling organoids into new computational ecologies, while “agency” invokes not only the game engine as an experimental agent, but also the negotiated play of agency between biological and synthetic actors. By designing an API for game engines, we also anticipate the possibilities of interdisciplinary applications across games, interactive experiences, AI benchmarking, to architectural design, while foregrounding ethical and aesthetic guardrails organoid intelligence
Light of the Heart’s Home – „Зурхний гэр”-эл
Full text linkLight of the Heart’s Home is a collaborative "site-specific mixed-media Immersive and multi-sensorial animated installation" by Kim Noce (Nature’s Calligraphy) and Tseveendulam.U (A Human is a Treasure), presented at the Erdenesiin Khuree Mongolian Calligraphy and Art Center in Kharkhorin. The installation transformed the Artist Ger/Yurt into a five-senses environment of animation, drawings, calligraphy, clothing, objects, incense, and projections, creating a living dialogue between nature, strength, and artistic creation. The exhibition is accompanied by a short film (Light of the Heart’s Home, 2 min), recorded during the opening on 21 August 2025, which documents the installation, its making, and the audience experience. Beyond documentation, the film stands as an artwork in its own right, tracing the creative process from Mongolian calligraphy to animated projections and revealing an ecological storytelling environment where nature and artistic gesture converge.
“Зүрхний гэрийн гэрэл” буюу Ким Ноче (Байгалийн бичлэг) , Ө.Цэвээндулам (Хүн бол эрдэнэ) нарын хамтарсан үзэсгэлэн нь Хархорин дахь Эрдэнэсийн Хүрээ Монголын Уран Бичлэг, Урлагийн Төвд нээлтээ хийсэн билээ. Энэхүү инсталяци үзэсгэлэн нь уран бүтээлчийн гэр/гэрийг анимэйшн, зураг, уран бичлэг, хувцас, эд зүйлс, арцны тансаг үнэр болон проектор зэрэг таван мэдрэхүйд хүртэгдэх орчныг бүрдүүлж, байгаль, хүч чадал, уран бүтээл хоорондын амьд харилцан яриаг бий болгосон. Мөн “Зүрхний гэрийн гэрэл” нэртэй 2025 оны 8-р сарын 21-нд болсон үзэсгэлэнгийн нээлт, инсталяци, уран бүтээлчдийн бүтээлээ хийж байх үеийн бүтээлтийн үйл явц болон үзэгчдийн бичлэгийг багтаасан 2 минутын богино хэмжээний киног үзэсгэлэнд зориулан дагалдуулан бүтээсэн билээ . Түүнчлэн энэ богино хэмжээний кино нь үйл явцыг баримтжуулснаас гадна , Монгол уран бичлэгээс проектороор үзүүлэх анимэйшн хүртэлх бүтээлч үйл явцыг харуулж, байгаль ба уран бүтээлийн хөдөлгөөнийг нэгтгэсэн экологийн өгүүлэмжийн орчныг дэлгэн харуулсан урлагийн бүтээл болсон юм.
Website https://kimnoce.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/light-of-the-hearts-home/
Exhibition Information / Үзэсгэлэнгийн мэдээлэл
Dates: 21 August – 30 September 2025, 9am–7pm / Огноо: 2025 оны 8-р сарын 21 – 9-р сарын 30, 09:00–19:00
Launch: 21 August 2025, 5pm / Нээлт: 2025 оны 8-р сарын 21-нд 17:00 цагт
Location: Erdenesiin Khuree Mongolian Calligraphy and Art Center, Erdenezuu Road 1-17a, Kharkhorin, Mongolia / Байршил: Эрдэнэсийн Хүрээ Монголын Уран Бичлэг, Урлагийн Төв, Эрдэнэ Зуугийн зам 1-17a, Хархорин, Монгол улс
Website / Вэбсайт: www.erdenesiin-khuree.com
Instagram / Инстаграм: @calligraphy_center_mongolia @lorratseegii @kimnoce
This exhibition was generously supported by UAL London College of Communication Research Funds @lcclondon and kindly hosted by the Erdenesiin Khuree Mongolian Calligraphy and Art Center
Videos
Exhibition 16:9: https://vimeo.com/1114610022
Making of 16:9: https://vimeo.com/1114905491
Walk-through 360: https://vimeo.com/1114907201
Mapping Projection Animation: https://vimeo.com/111450396