“Icarus, post-crash” Show Piece One

21 Svartfugl [blackbirds] on a hunted wild reindeer base. After meeting a group of hunters, hunting birds and beasts, we struck up a deal: all the birds they could bring me, in exchange for a pound of breath.

And birds they brought, bags and bags of them. Hands soaked in feathers and flesh, they were sorted through, sent on ice to my tanner (a craftsman so brilliant I heard he once tanned air). What returned to our studio was not a pile of feathers and feet but rather the full-bodied, beaked husks of those once soft flying blackbirds. And out of their box they were pulled, put onto the stand, and the garment quite literally designed itself. All we had to do was sew it together… by hand and heart, on a reindeer base, body to body to back to wing, to have our Icarus, post crash, sombre and in between.