This summer, Professor Jennifer Natalya Fink and artist Julie Laffin collaborated on a performance piece titled “Going (Paris) Green,” which examined greenwashing, toxicity and sustainability in the fashion industry.
Performed in Paris, France by Fink and eight co-performers, the piece took inspiration from Paris green, an emerald-green pigment used to color women’s clothing, home textiles, wallpaper and more in the late 19th century. Paris green was notably used in paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and their contemporaries. Underpinning its striking beauty, however, was a deadly ingredient, arsenic, which led to deleterious effects on women seeking to sport the latest in fashion.
“Researching Paris green brought us to thinking more rigorously and creatively about the toxic nature of our current clothing: in its manufacture, wearing and disposal — and its links to noxious ideas about women and beauty,” said Fink, a professor in the Department of English and a core faculty member in the Disability Studies Program. “It only made sense to perform this in Paris, the source of Paris green, the center of fast and high fashion and of many faux green initiatives.”
Fink cuts the extensions on the dress. Photos by Marie Rasabotsy.
For Laffin, a frequent collaborator with Fink, the piece was rooted in a deeply personal experience. While developing an anti-war piece in 2004, Laffin handled more than 40 military blankets, which exposed her to chemicals that have had a lasting impact on her quality of life.
“Professor Fink and I met in grad school and started a feminist performance collective; our early performances were centered around this project.,” said Laffin. “Later our personal experiences around disability brought us back together, not just in terms of our personal friendship, but because of our shared vision for a healthier and more sustainable environment.”
Building on this personal experience, the piece interrogated notions of greenwashing, a tactic used by the fashion industry to mask toxic, unsustainable practices with the language of environmentalism.
“Clothing is entirely unregulated in its marketing,” said Fink. “You can literally call arsenic green! Our aim was to create a site-specific, kinetic large-scale performance using a 100-foot dress in ways that exposed this greenwashing while creating a beautiful, engaging and playful performance.”
At the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris, Fink donned a 100-foot green dress made with eight strips of sustainable, non-toxic cloth majestically unfurled by eight participants clothed like toxic waste workers. Fink began the piece by wrapping around her arms 20 scarves made out of the same sustainable, non-toxic green fabric as the eight-piece dress unfurled dramatically behind her. These scarves had questions about greenwashing written on them, which she then gave away to audience members and passersby.
“Clothing is so personal, so intimate, so tied up with our sense of gender, desire, fashion and embodiment,” said Fink. “And everyone has to wear clothes! Yet despite the focus on toxins in the food system, there has been no real public discussion of toxins in clothing and its manufacture — just endless greenwashing.”
This fall, Fink and Laffin are collaborating on a related piece with Cléa Massiani, the duo’s curator and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. The piece, titled “Going (Georgetown) Green”, is sponsored by the Program in Disability Studies, the Department of Performing Arts, the Department of English, the Medical Humanities Initiative, the Disability Cultural Center and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
“For the upcoming work at Georgetown, the goal is to engage the students in meaningful ways and observe what happens next,” said Laffin. “It would be great if they were inspired to take ownership of the piece and propel it to a brand new place.”
Interested community members can learn more on their website.
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