Deconstructing Khaki: An Online Performance Lecture

Photo by Baxter Koziol

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 6th
11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST

Created in partnership with the Rainmaker Craft Initiative as part of the Virtual Conversations on Craft lecture series

Registration required

ABOUT THE TALK
Border Patrol adopts the architectural and aesthetic cues of our subject matter to inform how we organize and execute exhibitions. Our goal has always been to explore the intersection of contemporary art and capitalist aesthetics. Our current interests are specifically focused on the way that khaki represents these overlapping topics, emphasizing the material’s colonial history and role in contemporary corporate fashion.

Khaki is an Urdu word meaning 'soil-colored'. Sought out for its lightweight fabric and loose fit, khaki quickly became standard issue for British colonists and the United States military. Khaki has since invaded corporate offices and became a chosen symbol of the “working professional.” More recently, this office uniform has been co-opted by white supremacists in America as a camouflage or veneer to cover their ideology of hate. Given these past and present uses, our discussion aims to uncover the aesthetic and political future of khaki.


ABOUT RAINMAKER CRAFT INITIATIVE
Rainmaker Craft Initiative (RCI) is a 501c3 non-profit organization established in 2013, now under the direction of four former faculty of Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC). The initiative is driven to propagate the intellectual capital of OCAC’s creative education. Envisioned as a decentralized organization of nodes, RCI intends to perpetuate material practice through the discourse of contemporary craft. Though OCAC will no longer exist as an institution, the faculty have an opportunity to seed new beginnings founded on OCAC’s principles. RCI will honor OCAC by generating creative ecologies in the Northwest and throughout North America.

Focused on advancing partnerships with a variety of constituencies within the greater Portland community, RCI will support learning communities fostering self-reliant, critically engaged makers across a spectrum of mediums, capabilities, and aspirations. As an asset granting enterprise RCI will strengthen experiential, alternative creative education platforms focused on a Craft ethos.

Rainmaker Craft Initiative is an educational platform committed to creative inquiry founded on Craft. Focused on advancing partnerships within the greater Portland community and nationally, RCI emphasizes material practice and community exchange. RCI is dedicated to fostering socially conscious, critically engaged makers across a spectrum of mediums, outcomes and aspirations.

Instagram: @rainmakercraftinitiative