MDP | 2023 FALL | DEV 2
Crafting Two Voices:
An Insurrectional Wearable Poster for Two
DATE
December 2023
CATEGORY
Print, installation
DESIGNER
Jane Lu
MENTOR
Sean Donahue
Jennifer Schanen Rider
December 2023
CATEGORY
Print, installation
DESIGNER
Jane Lu
MENTOR
Sean Donahue
Jennifer Schanen Rider
Wearable Poster of Two Voices
This project explores the tension between institutionalized intimacy and radical critique by merging two contrasting texts: excerpts from The Coming Insurrection—a political manifesto challenging traditional family and romantic structures as instruments of control—and articles from the Chinese Marriage Law. Through this juxtaposition, the work interrogates how legal and emotional languages reinforce or resist systemic power.
The final form is a collaborative wearable poster made from scrolls of printed and marked-up texts, sewn together to resemble the structure of ancient Chinese criminal restraints. Two individuals must wear the piece together, their bodies literally entangled in the legal and ideological binds of love and law. Depending on their orientation, one reads from The Coming Insurrection, the other from the Marriage Law—forcing them into a slow, close, and partial reading of both. Intimacy here becomes both a constraint and a point of resistance.
This project explores the tension between institutionalized intimacy and radical critique by merging two contrasting texts: excerpts from The Coming Insurrection—a political manifesto challenging traditional family and romantic structures as instruments of control—and articles from the Chinese Marriage Law. Through this juxtaposition, the work interrogates how legal and emotional languages reinforce or resist systemic power.
The final form is a collaborative wearable poster made from scrolls of printed and marked-up texts, sewn together to resemble the structure of ancient Chinese criminal restraints. Two individuals must wear the piece together, their bodies literally entangled in the legal and ideological binds of love and law. Depending on their orientation, one reads from The Coming Insurrection, the other from the Marriage Law—forcing them into a slow, close, and partial reading of both. Intimacy here becomes both a constraint and a point of resistance.
Process
I began by isolating legal text from the marriage law, then selectively redacted key phrases using markers in varying shades of grayscale and halftone patterns. This manipulation served both to obscure and emphasize—drawing attention to gendered language, implicit hierarchies, and mechanisms of social control embedded in bureaucratic speech. The choice to work with redaction and visual noise was deliberate, reflecting the friction between legibility and denial, presence and erasure.
Final Work
