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Photo by James Ryang
TASTEMAKERS
NICOLE MACKINLAY HAHN
The poetry behind
the purchase
Using her lyrical style of video art, Nicole Mackinlay
Hahn puts an original spin on conscious consumerism
Imagine picking up an Ethiopian silk purse at the trendiest luxury boutique
in town and focusing not on the purse but on a 30-second video showing
the Malagasy man who helped make its raw silk, as he chases his friend
around their village, waving a silkworm on a stick.
“I want people to be more emotionally attached to where their things
come from,” says Nicole Mackinlay Hahn, a video artist whose Reap What
You Sew project goes a long way in establishing such a connection.
Using documentary-style footage shot in Africa and then distilled into an
interactive video piece called Mirror/Africa (which includes the silkworm clip
described above), Reap What You Sew offers a fascinating glimpse into
the supply chain that connects African communities to the American
consumers who buy the fashions they produce.
Mackinlay Hahn, an accomplished video artist,
launched the project in 2005, when the Edun
clothing company took her to Lesotho to shoot
footage they hoped to use in “an advocacy video
to tell their brand story.”
“It was my weird initiation into fashion,” Mackinlay
Hahn recalls. “I could not believe how many people
touched one garment of clothing.”
The trip marked the beginning of her love affair
with the continent. She has since returned five
times. On those trips, she traced more designer
goods back through the supply chain — including
fashion from Duro Olowu, beauty products
from Philip B and jewelry by Devon Paige
McCleary — making sure that at least some of
their components were sourced or produced
in Africa.
Mackinlay Hahn then created hundreds of
30-second video clips that play through an interactive and transparent
domelike sculpture that she installed as a temporary public art project at
Barneys New York in May 2008 and hopes to bring to additional retail
venues this year. When consumers pick up one of the items she tracked, a
special bamboo tag prompts them to scan it at the nearby installation.
Depending on where the item originated or was produced, they see clips of
Madagascar, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Uganda, Tunisia, Ghana or South Africa.
Mirror images Nicole Mackinlay Hahn’s crystal ball-like sculpture plays clips from Mirror/
Africa, the video footage that lies at the heart of her ambitious Reap What You Sew project.
It’s an interactive exploration of the supply chain linking communities in Africa, such as the
one pictured at right, to the American consumers who buy the goods they produce.
42 l Basel 2009 l COUTURE International Jeweler
Mackinlay Hahn says she was driven to
create the project — and the feature-length
documentary film it inspired, due to premiere
in 2010 — after recognizing she could harness
the Web’s interactive and touch-screen technology
to convey information “way beyond
[what could be contained in] the tag.”
She stresses that her work isn’t intended
to preach but to delight, inspire and celebrate.
More poetic than information-driven,
the videos suggest that “you still need entertainment
value in order to get an emotional
reaction in a transactional environment.”
One sign that she has succeeded appears
in a clip that could end up in the documentary,
which Mackinlay Hahn has structured around
the experiences of consumers using the
installation. A middle-aged Barneys shopper
is shown watching one of the videos. “I like to
know that my consumerism isn’t hurting
someone else,” says the woman, making Reap
What You Sew’s point, exactly. ■