⣠⢀⣀⢀⡀⡀ sofia irene ⠶⠚⣛⣉⠠⠀⣄⣀

⠚based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands

⣄sofiairene at me.com

ig ⣛@persophino

Texas-born designer trained in fashion and curating. Her practice contemplates forecasting as a tool and compass to afford a semiotical reading on contemporary forms of survival and hyperobjects as a necessary ontology of Survie. Parallel to that, she is writing her first book, a collection of occurrences on knives.

Forthcoming, Survie Resources aims to become a platform for conversations and thinking together about what does survival mean today. 

Sofia has honed image research as a branch of her curatorial efforts. Initially, scanning books, clippings, and found images, making annotations and archiving them into physical folders. Book of copies is an imitation of San Rocco’s magazine way of indexing research process and registrering material from other authors. Her fascinations document the most popular camouflage patterns that stem from the military complex, mainly but not exclusively from the US. These camo patterns, as a textile motif, are observed in other images within the fashion realm, to be later appropiated, transformed and applied onto fashionable garments that enable their signifiers to be mobilzed and read in a different manner. She creates narratives per camouflage pattern as a sequence of stories and by using Instagram as a publishing medium, this allows to share news and posts from other users in relation to current events and occurences, pushing these images to belong to a message that is not solely isolated as desktop research. By way of timestamping, the SR assemblage are short sequences of an overarching documentation of the militarization of every day life.

Survie is an 8-minute long sonic trek guided through the voice of a narrator, who through four chapters introduces a character named the survivalist and poses questions about the loss of infrastructures in the face of disaster scenarios. The track formulates these chapters through ominous atmospheres and suspending the listener at the end and beginning of each chapter with rain, storm, and slashing sounds. Composed using rhythmic lush synths and dry percussions to entice the listener deeper into the trek, and to instill a sense of preparedness, sounds of sirens are deployed. As the narrator, uncovers the operational logic of the survivalist, even though the character attempts to operate on the margins of society, it is still embedded as a neoliberal choreography that utilizes tools and artifacts to secure its preparedness and safeguarding against harsh climate conditions.

Her grad project To Render a Shelter bridges the realms of fashion and video games through an installation, which mixes video, narrative structures and audio techniques to uncover how these disciplines are eerily alike when it comes to visualising and utilizing climate change as a trope for product creation. Both realms address a near-future where the climate crisis is no longer an allegory. This project generated a testing ground to what was later to become Survie Resources.

Previously, she has a bachelor in fashion. In 2017, she followed medieval philosophy and critical theory courses at the cultural studies department in Leiden University. In 2018, she enrolled to the Design Curating and Writing master under the guidance of Tamar Shafrir and Agata Jawroska. At Design Academy, she maintained an active involvement as part of the Lecture Series Committee and becoming part of the communications team during Salone del Mobile GEO-DESIGN Alibaba in 2019. Midst of the pandemic era, she graduated in September 2020 as part of the first cohort of the Critical Inquiry Lab MA programme under the direction of Saskia van Stein.