“It’s not only a project to uncover the negative impact of the textile industry, but also a story to give us all back the certainty that changing things is still possible and we all have a role to play”. This is how WRÅD presents on its social channels Junk – Full Closets, a docuseries co-produced by Will Media and Sky Italia filmed across three continents to tell the story of the big production hubs and the big dumping grounds where discarded garments accumulate far from our sight. With a touching and reflective look, Matteo Ward guides the viewer through six episodes filmed in six different countries: Chile, Ghana, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India and Italy, each one dedicated to a different problem caused by fashion. One of the key objectives, that is, to uncover the truth about the negative impact of fashion, was definitely achieved, thanks to a raw, direct, no-frills storytelling that highlights what lies beyond the borders, beyond the horizon, beyond appearance. The series shows only the truth, the complicated truth, which we often refuse to acknowledge, an introspective process that aims at turning from mere denunciation into something more concrete: “Changing things is still possible,” reads the trailer description, “if we all consciously choose to inform ourselves and play an active role. In other words, we all have wardrobes full of ‘problematic’ clothes, and with Junk we want to give a more honest and concrete meaning to the word sustainability, in order to understand, together, how to question the status quo of the fashion system”. The docuseries, presented last Thursday at Base Milano, is available from today on Sky Italia’s YouTube channel, on demand on Sky and on NOW, and from Saturday 8 April also on Sky TG24.
The first two episodes online
The first two episodes can now be viewed on YouTube. The first one was filmed in Chile: “In 2022,” this is the synopsis of the episode, “the Atacama Desert was the focus of social and press coverage around the world: a series of videos showed the Chilean desert flooded with used clothes from western markets. After just a few weeks, however, the story faded into the background. Are those clothes still there? And how did they get there? A year later, we went to Chile to try to find out the true story of those clothes”. We were catapulted into an almost dystopian world, with images that will shock the viewer. What you see is not a Hollywood film, not special effects, but reality. Without revealing too much and spoil the viewing, let us move on to the second episode, set in Ghana. Here, what causes concern (to put it mildly) is the glimpse of a beach covered in rags. What is the episode about? “Ghana is among the world’s biggest importers of second-hand clothes. Every week 15 million second-hand garments arrive in the capital from the Northern Hemisphere and are put up for sale in the famous Kantamanto market. But how many of these clothes are really in a condition to be reused? Where do those that are not end up? And what impact do they have on the population? We went to Accra to find the answer”.
The promotional video – Paolo Naldini’s contribution
To offer further food for thought on the pivotal theme of the series, a promotional video was made featuring Matteo Wrad talking first with Paolo Naldini, director of Cittadellarte, and then with Michelangelo Pistoletto. The video was filmed at Fondazione Pistoletto, an active backdrop when it comes to sustainable fashion: Matteo is in fact one of the fashion designers of the platform B.E.S.T. (Better Ethical Sustainable Think-Tank), the operational laboratory dedicated to the development of sustainability in the textile sector, from raw materials to design, from production to training; the result of a contamination between art that assumes social responsibility and a fashion world in search of new models of ethical, responsible and sustainable development. Fashion B.E.S.T. also brings together in a platform dozens of companies producing sustainable fabrics, yarns and accessories. The B.E.S.T. collective is inspired by the thinking of Michelangelo Pistoletto and aims at being an energising hub that merges forces as diverse as aesthetics and ethics, creation and production, artistic sensitivity and social commitment. The fashion designers part of the collective want to inspire, produce and disseminate a responsible and circular vision of fashion, each operating with their individual sensibility. Their activity is therefore directly linked to the contents of the docuseries Junk – Full Closets. Also, one of Cittadellarte’s beating hearts is Accademia Unidee, which offers, among others, a three-year course in sustainable fashion. Paolo Naldini was interviewed because of this strong link between Fondazione Pistoletto and ethical fashion: “The building housing Fondazione Pistoletto,” he began, “was a wool mill that had been abandoned and had become waste. An artist started to regenerate it and, with him, thinkers, philosophers, activists, entrepreneurs joined in, and together they created a school where fashion is conceived and studied to be sustainable. Who decides what something is and when it becomes waste? Who designs the things that later become waste? There will never be a time when we design things not destined to become waste”. The director then focused on the Venus of the Rags: “Pistoletto made the Venus of the Rags in 1967. In the work,” he explained, “beauty holds together the rags and the waste of the world. Cittadellarte is the actual representation of that work. Here that work of art on waste is done on a daily basis”.
The promotional video – Michelangelo Pistoletto’s contribution
In the video contribution, Matteo Ward asked Pistoletto to explain how the Venus of the Rags came about: “I believe in chance,” replied the artist, “which is the combination of all things. I happened to have a heap of rags in my studio, because I was using old clothes to clean and polish the metal sheets I used to make my mirror paintings. Then one day I saw a stone Venus in front of a shop, I loaded it into my car and took it to the studio; then I piled up the rags and ‘commissioned’ the Venus to do a service, that is, to hold them up. Venus always regenerates herself at the same time remaining an imperishable memory, even though I did not think that the world situation would degenerate so soon into this extreme consumerism, from which I tried to escape with my work. Venus is the eternal and endless symbol of beauty”. Pistoletto then gave his take on Junk: “Also thanks to your docuseries, we can see how this civilisation is becoming ragged, tattered and exhausted in its consumption”. Ward then showed Pistoletto a photo of one of the mountains of rags in Ghana: “It is monstrous. Nothing can justify something like this,” said the artist, “except an extreme greed to possess this planet. Science and technology have allowed us to replace the world, but we must know how to make good use of fabric, of clothes, of costume. What is the costume of our time? It is destructive”. The fashion designer then revealed the objective of the documentary, which is to “generate a new awareness in order to try to start from scratch and find the Third Paradise”. The artist closed with a statement that touched and moved Wrad: “What you are doing documenting all this,” Pistoletto concluded, “is an extension artwork of the Venus of the Rags”.
