#80 Clothesline

We recently came up with an idea in which a washing line plays a central role in an interactive, artistic-political installation. The installation transforms a public space such as a bus stop into a temporary meeting place and invites people to talk about topics such as care work, social inequality, body shaming and sustainability.

The idea goes like this: An oversized washing line is stretched in a public place. Alternatively, a clothes horse can simply be set up at a bus stop. Both variants can be used in different ways.

One possibility would be to use the line as a performative intervention, for example by placing a laundry basket with wet laundry next to it with a note and the inscription: "Didn't have time, please hang up and take down and fold again after drying". Depending on how the laundry basket is arranged, different explanations or assumptions about the reasons and the person behind it arise. This is because each item of clothing tells a different story about a lack of time, financial worries or demands for cleanliness and appearance in different social contexts. The image or idea of the person that emerges could also be broken from time to time by a performer.

Another way to use the clothesline would be to design it as an open clothes swap point where people from the neighborhood can hang up or take clothes and thus be encouraged to think about consumption (options) and sustainability. Clothes that would otherwise lie around unused at home take on a new meaning and become a symbol of sharing and mutual support in the neighborhood.

Another possibility would be to use the line as a temporary exhibition space to display stories about freedom and constraints that are collected on site. The idea could also be linked to laundry to be hung up or already hung up by asking what stories the individual pieces tell about social and individual freedom and socio-economic, cultural or patriarchal constraints.

The project could also be carried out in cooperation with local initiatives, district centers, feminist organizations and social associations in order to collect real everyday stories of those affected and make them visible.