Alexa Pollmann

Biography

Alexa Pollmann is a design-researcher with a background in fashion and an MA in Design Interactions (RCA). As Subject Leader in Wearable Technology at London College of Fashion (UAL) she works closely with the MA Fashion Futures in expanding fashion practice. Fostering discourse around fashion technology, she focusses on human representations in physical and digital realms: she designs wearables, bodies, avatars and interactions from a critical and speculative design view to craft narratives that question socio-political contexts and futures.

Alexa is one half of the Peut-Porter Studio:
By augmenting reality through physical and digital means, we invite audiences to perform body politics as they join our collective experiences. Motivated by macro systems of social and political context, our work is guided by our understanding and knowledge of traditional making and offers a response on a micro-level; informed by fashion, textile and silversmithing techniques, we create wearable artefacts that expand the realms of wearable technology, meandering the fine line between gadget and garment, costume and avatar, and the interdependence between self and other.

The idea of the subject-object, best described in the metaphor of a mask that only truly comes into being when activated - is one that we have studied in our work by creating interactions with garments and devices that transform our relationship to others: being watched diverges from being the one watching, and our theatric experiences offer entry to ritual-like moments of dressing and becoming, whilst inviting the idea of gameplay, agency and interaction.

Peut-Porter’s work was exhibited and performed internationally. We have shown at the Venice Biennale, Design Museum London, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Museum of London, Jerusalem Design Week, BFI London, Deutsches Technikmuseum, De Doelen Theatre Rotterdam - amongst others.