Imminent Mode

Fashion on Edge

by Sharon Arnold

November 3rd's First Thursday ArtWalk marks the return of artist-curator trio Imminent Mode with an Opening Gala highlighting their unique blend of fashion, art, catwalk performance, and gallery exhibition. Their reemergence occurs at a new venue this year, ARTS King Street Station in Seattle's Chinatown-International District. The exhibition opens at 5:00 PM, then around 8:00 PM transforms into a street takeover and guerilla-style fashion show. 

The show features ten pairs of artists and fashion designers, each team tasked with creating a series of sculpted garments displayed alongside large-scale editorial-style photographs of models posing in the exhibited attire. For the exhibition, visual artists also display pieces representing their work apart from the collaboration, expanding the scope of the theme. Imminent Mode encourages the installations to be fully immersive, participatory, and theatrical experiences. For the Opening Gala, two supporting garments are created and walked by models to fill out the experience. 

The unexpected is the norm for this large-scale event, but to offer a hint Jordan Christianson described a previous incarnation of an Imminent Mode Gala: "One of my favorite years featured a team member named Juan (professional name "One") who is a local drag and butoh [contemporary Japanese dance] performer. When the doors opened, they were posed in their team's installation as part of a 'living vignette.' When it was time for the fashion show to start, they were the cue: In the middle of a packed gallery, their mannequin-esque solidity began to animate into this beautiful butoh performance, which — like the Pied Piper — led the show. They slowly, Suzuki style, walked out onto the street through the crowd. No one knew what was going on. Everyone was so confused — but tickled — and really paid attention. Once they finished their walk of the circuit, they went right back into the gallery, sat on their chair in the installation, and stayed there static for the rest of the night. Magic."

Imminent Mode is a cooperative project founded by Adé A Cônnére, Anouk Rawkson, and Jordan Christianson that embodies everything from social components of kinship, community, identity, and activism to art forms of storytelling, visual art, fashion, and performance. The project began in 2015 when George Long from True Love Gallery invited Adé A Cônnére to be a guest curator for an exhibition, offering Adé an opportunity to expand beyond performance and step into an organizational role. Adé formulated a plan to bring fashion designers and visual artists together to collaborate on a series of wearable, performative creations that bridge both disciplines. Adé brought Anouk into the collaboration to add new layers and dimensions to the project, and they invited Jordan Christianson to complete the curatorial team. As creative people who love and share overlapping processes of making, generating, and building, it made sense for them to join forces.

These three partners bring their unique talents to Imminent Mode, creating a multimedia, multi-disciplinary, and multi-artist platform synthesizing visual art and garment making. Adé A Cônnére is a performer, musician, actor, activist, and model with a rich entertainment history in Seattle that includes singing in the disco-inspired duo, Bijoux. Anouk Rawkson, who has exhibited in many prominent galleries across Seattle, is a curator and mixed-media abstract artist inspired by the symbolism and layered meanings of visual pop culture and subculture. Jordan Christianson, for the last decade, has been a full-time garment and graphic designer for the entertainment industry with a public and private clientele (drag, burlesque, indie wrestling, hotels, industrial design, etc.) Jordan indulges "the surreal and the absurd, but seen through a chic, sophisticated lens." Together, they select pairs of artists and designers to collaborate on works culminating in the fashion show and exhibition. 

Adé, Anouk, and Jordan select creators based on their scope of work, and pair them off into teams made of one artist and one designer. Each team is formed of one Imminent Mode alumni, paired with invited artists and designers with a broad range of backgrounds and experiences, including both emerging and established figures. Compatible and contrasting techniques, concepts, and talents are also a factor in the decision making process. Each team combines their skills to create three wearable works of art that result in a celebration of spectacle and creativity. The teams’ diverse array of backgrounds, cultures, and aesthetics meet the challenge from different, often unexpected, perspectives. 

"This year's teams are a culmination of both IMMINENT MODE family/alumni, past wants, and newcomers that we found through our first ever open call," says Christianson. "During our vetting process, we really paid attention to the voice each artist had, and determined how well they could work together. A few examples: Bren Bryan and ANDROS grant are alumni; we've always enjoyed working with them, and always try to give space for their grand visions. Casey Curran and Devon Yan are long-time friends (Yan is also an alumni). With Curran's eye and aplomb for intricate, kinetic sculpture, and Yan's sophisticated and chic design sense, we knew that their voices would complement... but character and temperament? Absolutely. We always like to pair some wild cards that we think could be a good match ­— though perhaps not on first meet. For instance, Amanda Manitach and Jacob Sutton: We thought their individual style and voices were strong... but how well would they play together? As it turns out, their pasts (totally unbeknownst to us) were extremely copacetic! We just matched life-long friends! The same with Mariel Andrade and Pete Rush. Both swim in very different circles, creatively and socially, but they found some very strong through-lines in their shared histories that were the spark for a super-intriguing installation!" 

Each year, Adé, Anouk, and Jordan decide on a thematic challenge to present to the teams. Revolution/Resist, the first exhibition, spoke to the role of artists in activism and politics; Sirens celebrated women in music; Lore tapped into various threads of cultural lore and storytelling from around the world; and Fast Forward imagined the potential of religion, politics, and society’s impact on future cultures. This year's theme is Us, exploring the influence of ancestry and methods of bringing people together in harmony despite cultural differences. The theme, Us, is meant to inspire reflection on where creators and viewers originate, in whatever ways our origins have meaning, whether ethnic, cultural, or queer lineages. The question is what makes us who we are and how identity translates to community. The theme is a guide, but there are no rules — artists and designers have free rein to experiment. The category is open to interpretation for artists and designers to explore their vision, how they see the theme from their experience, and how it manifests through their creative expression. Even Adé, Anouk, and Jordan don't know how each team will approach the concept until the work is revealed during installation, creating an element of mystery for both the curatorial team and the public only resolved on opening night.

Anouk Rawkson describes his collaboration with Jordan Christianson as a prime example of this year’s theme of Us. Jordan is from a Swedish background; Anouk is Mexican. They discovered a deep relationship between Mexico and Sweden that predated their personal affinity — including a shared love for Abba, who wrote a song in Spanish for their many Mexican fans; and the fact that one of the earliest Miss Sweden winners became a Mexican citizen. Finding even more interconnected histories together, Jordan and Anouk drew from these points of connection to create a story highlighting queer nightlife in Mexico and Sweden.

This year’s artists and designer duos are: 

  • Jordan Christianson + Anouk Rawkson 

  • Casey Curran + Devon Yan 

  • Christopher Vazquez + Aaron Lafferty

  • ANDROS grant + Bren Bryan  

  • Jacob Sutton + Amanda Manitach 

  • Jordan Christianson + Lilia Deering

  • Mariel Andrade + Pete Rush 

  • Mary Anne Carter + Michael Welke 

Photographers Deborah Spencer and Kelly O will document the designs, contributing to the curation through editorials. 

The questions posed by this year’s theme of Us are important to our search for answers about how to live more thoughtfully in reciprocal relationships with each other and the land, in this time, today. How did we arrive here, what are the histories of this land, and what legacies remain so that we may thrive going forward? In posing questions that encourage us to examine our lineages, Us inspires a proposal that we may potentially connect to each other more deeply because of them. 

Art and fashion have been interconnected and enduring voices throughout history. Across the world, art is storytelling. Textiles carry valuable pieces of information, passed down from one generation to the next. Wisdom, history, and narratives are often literally woven into fabric and worn by the culture-bearer as clothing. How clothing is worn, arranged, and assembled conveys belonging and lineage through adornment and beauty, whether that is cultural heritage, familial connections, or cultural kinship. In every era, we find ways to assert and reinforce our belonging through shared expression, stories, and creativity. We create and nurture our culture through art and what we wear; to fortify the interconnectivity of our literal and metaphorical threads.  

Imminent Mode’s theme reveals how garments represent a myriad of singular and syncretized cultures. In the 21st century, we not only embody the place and time in which we live, but all of these other parts of ourselves that are meaningful, to combine and code our adornment with a personal expression of identity and strength, desire and attraction, to shield and armor ourselves, and to convey a part of our inner world through outer expression. Art and fashion are fantastical manifestations of the creator’s imagination — when we look at artwork, or a garment, we can divine some of its roots. But the ultimate expression comes from how the creators tell the story. These works carry weight, they have gravity; but there is room to be fun, beautiful, and glorious in ways that lift us out of the seriousness and mundanity of everyday life to find reprieve through the transformative power and potential of fashion. Perhaps Imminent Mode’s greatest gift is that through them we find catharsis and celebration in who we are, where we come from, and how we come together.