Mouth-nose protection mask for self-sewing
The Institute for Education in the Arts has dealt with the design and realization of prototypes for MNS masks for the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the courses Sewing Technique / Cutting Technique by Christiane Gruber and Pia Elisa Nagl. The mask selected for implementation was developed and designed by Alena Stöckl.
The students worked intensively on cutting, processing techniques and contextualization issues in order to incorporate these into the design of the Academy masks.
This resulted in seven prototypes for Academy MNS masks, each of which expressed in its own individual way the preoccupation with the themes of masks, pandemic, distance, positioning of the academy as an institution, (in)visibility as well as in terms of the client and the realization, both visually and contextually.
Participating designers / artists: Fiona Albrechtsberger, Chelsea Amada, Laura Ettel, Rasmus Richter, Alena Stöckl, Sophie Vitovec.
The instructions and the cutting sheet for 3 sizes are available for download. If you/you want an academy fabric bag to sew the MNS in the typical academy colors, please send an email to v.wolf@akbild.ac.at and the bag will be sent or can be picked up at the Public Relations Office from Mon to Fri from 10 am to 5 pm.
As teachers and students in the department of fashion and styles, in which content on fair production, sustainability and critical thinking as well as a reflective attitude to values in the textile sector are developed (to name just a small excerpt), we have decided not to put the mask for the academy into production.
The research on production sites and quality of the final production made us rethink the project and leave the chosen design by Alena Stöckl as an artistic-creative single piece and develop the basic idea into an emancipatory project.
Instead of the planned masks, you can download the pattern and instructions for creating the academy mask from the Akademie-Bag to create your individual academy MNS mask.
About this decision we want to create a distancing from compromised and turning to more sustainable solutions. This variant creates both an emancipatory moment and also integrates the mediatory level inherent to our institute.