D’wilde Lüt Open Costume Workshop

Since moving to Freiburg, I’ve been on the look out for local crafts and traditions that can be inspirations for new STEAM projects. Over the last several years I’ve worked on tinkering takes on cuckoo clocks, sound organs, St. Martin’s Day lanterns and advent calendar windows. One of the local traditions that I’ve been thinking about for a while is the fasnet (carnival) celebration with masks, costumes and unique musical instruments.

I was really excited when I heard about the D’wilde Lüt (wild people) project from artists Julia Huber and Maud Consigny. In partnership with local recycled materials center Re:purpose Collective, they are leading a open exploration of the ways that carnival masks and costumes can be made with sustainable materials and experimental technology. Last weekend I joined in an open make session that they hosted over two days to prototype new designs and ideas.

It’s so fun to participate in workshop at a creative reuse center with so many inspiring materials at your fingertips. Julia and Maud laid out a buffet table with some selected items and Sophia from Re:purpose Collective was there to open the stacks for anything the makers needed. I also brought some of my own digital materials including motors, solar panels, micro:bit boards and lots of LEDs.

For inspiration we looked at images from the Carnaval Sauvage in Brussels as well as the book Wilder Mann: The image of the Savage by Charles Freger. I also took some inspiration from one of my tinkering heroes, Jean Tinguely, who participated in a carnival group called d'Kuttlebutzer in Basel for many years. The experiments around the table ranged from layering plastic spoons on a shirt, adding egg carton ‘spikes’ to a robe, making shoulder pads from packing material and ethernet cable and combining unexpected samples of fabric, sheets and curtains. For my exploration I focused on trying to add a solar powered motor to the top of a carboard mask.

It was really fun to start to try to think about how to arrange the motor and electricity generating solar panels drawing on some of my previous Playing with the Sun experiences. One challenge was that the motor wasn’t so powerful even in direct sunlight so I had to figure out how to add size to the spinner without adding too much weight. I ended up creating a feathered costume with a rotating motors and other extended decorations.

As well I started thinking about creating more low entry points for people to build cardboard masks using everyday materials. I took some inspiration from workshops at the Tinkering Studio from Scout Tran-Caffee and Jesse “Roadkill” Wilson as well as ideas from collage artist Hanoch Piven. I’ll be leading a tinkerning workshop for the public on May 9th for the final celebration of the project in collaboration with Open Art Festival Freiburg to give people the chance to spontaneously make their own costumes out of cardboard and recycled materials.

I’m looking forward to the next steps for this projects and continuing to think about the ways that tinkering can be in conversation with the local traditions here in Freiburg.