Using her lyrical style of video art, Nicole Mackinlay Hahn puts an original spin on conscious consumerism
Imagine picking up an Ethiopian silk purse at the trendiest luxury boutique in town and focusing not on the purse but on a 30-second video showing the Malagasy man who helped make its raw silk, as he chases his friend around their village, waving a silkworm on a stick. “I want people to be more emotionally attached to where their things come from,” says Nicole Mackinlay Hahn, a video artist whose Reap What You Sew project goes a long way in establishing such a connection. Using documentary-style footage shot in Africa and then distilled into an interactive video piece called Mirror/Africa (which includes the silkworm clip described above), Reap What You Sew offers a fascinating glimpse into the supply chain that connects African communities to the American consumers who buy the fashions they produce. Mackinlay Hahn, an accomplished video artist, launched the project in 2005, when the Edun clothing company took her to Lesotho to shoot footage they hoped to use in “an advocacy video to tell their brand story.” “It was my weird initiation into fashion,” Mackinlay Hahn recalls. “I could not believe how many people touched one garment of clothing.”
The trip marked the beginning of her love affair with the continent. She has since returned five times. On those trips, she traced more designer goods back through the supply chain — including fashion from Duro Olowu, beauty products from Philip B and jewelry by Devon Paige McCleary — making sure that at least some of their components were sourced or produced in Africa. Mackinlay Hahn then created hundreds of 30-second video clips that play through an interactive and transparent domelike sculpture that she installed as a temporary public art project at Barneys New York in May 2008 and hopes to bring to additional retail venues this year. When consumers pick up one of the items she tracked, a special bamboo tag prompts them to scan it at the nearby installation. Depending on where the item originated or was produced, they see clips of Madagascar, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Uganda, Tunisia, Ghana or South Africa. Mackinlay Hahn says she was driven to create the project — and the feature-length documentary film it inspired, due to premiere in 2010 — after recognizing she could harness the Web’s interactive and touch-screen technology to convey information “way beyond [what could be contained in] the tag.” She stresses that her work isn’t intended to preach but to delight, inspire and celebrate. More poetic than information-driven, the videos suggest that “you still need entertainment value in order to get an emotional reaction in a transactional environment.” One sign that she has succeeded appears in a clip that could end up in the documentary, which Mackinlay Hahn has structured around the experiences of consumers using the installation. A middle-aged Barneys shopper is shown watching one of the videos. “I like to know that my consumerism isn’t hurting someone else,” says the woman, making Reap What You Sew’s point, exactly.
Mirror images Nicole Mackinlay Hahn’s crystal ball-like sculpture plays clips from Mirror/ Africa, the video footage that lies at the heart of her ambitious Reap What You Sew project. It’s an interactive exploration of the supply chain linking communities in Africa to the American consumers who buy the goods they produce.
