21st Century Rag Pickers
The Ecological GeishaningThrough the London queer scene, I found the playful, idiotic, waste-eating movement correctly and incorrectly referred to as “Geish”.The Geish Manifesto, written by performance artist and Geish creature, Princess Pathojen, loosely recounts the entomology of Geish; from a sector of Geishas who were strictly men dressed as women, later reaching western drag communities who dropped the “a”, continuing to refer to their dress/fantasy/costume/decoration/adornment as just “Geish” (Pathojen, 2023). Since Pathojen’s entry to the London Queer scene post-pandemic, “Geish” has evolved as the term for fanciful, playful, stupid, garbage-centric, loosely constructed, cheap, found-object, messy, maximalist, trinket-core, poorly hand-crafted fashion/styling assemblage (the two are inseparable in reference to Geish). I asked Pathojen if they thought Geish was inherently ecological, to which he said no, her first encounter with the term was from, ‘super cunty dolls (trans women) who were using this word to just describe their clothes,’ which were designer – not mindfully sourced or anti-capitalist by any nature, but not ‘any less Geish,’ (Pathojen, 2023). Pathojen’s Geish, however, is waste-minded, dependant on a scavenging-making-remaking process; his Geish is a Divine Craft.
f.19-20 Princess Pathojen (2023) via @cultofshane
Though Geish has a long legacy outside of Pathojen’s practice, we both witnessed their drastic influence within the London Queer community, through performance, publications, and consistent active engagement in raves/parties, changing “Geish”s definition locally to meaning ecological, handmade, scavenged ensembles. The more trash-Geish queer people go to a rave, the more queer people see it, see how achievable it is and return in their own head to toe trash-Geish. The “cuntification” of the hand-made, the truly waste-centric, encouraged the community to stop buying frivolously and instead start hoarding trash to make with. In 2023, designer is seen as almost embarrassing within the Geishified queer scene (Pathojen, 2023). The movement has escalated because the queer scene thinks itself as “left wing”, although this often fails to manifest socially, it does create receptivity to ecological response-ability. The scene refused to continue classist, capitalist-centric hierarchies around wealth, and purchase-ability, instead giving praise to creativity and resourcefulness.
f.21-23 Aje’s Geish (2023) via @ara.ata_
Trash-Geish is enriched by its capacity to fall apart and be remade, it is always in fluctuation between safety pins, and thus is rarely made *well enough* to be purchasable within mainstream audiences. Regardless, some practitioners, Pathojen included, do sell trash-Geish. Upon my asking about this, Pathojen said, ‘buying my Geish? Yes. Buying Geish? No.’ expressing his need to commodify their practice to make rent, though believing Geish looks are best achieved when items are found, crafted with, and assembled into looks by they who wear it. Geish is transferrable between people as Geish is affected by the mood, walk, expression of the person wearing it, therefore one person’s Geish can never be another’s – it become their fantasy in their individual construction. Regardless, purchasing it reduces the process of assemblage, making the clothing less intimate, less intrinsic to one’s character. It reduces Geish to a bought identity, thus reenforcing identity commodities, rather than a spiritual intersection of the communal and the individual through the styling of found objects. It eradicated the planetary connection and the muscular effort of making; it kills its soul. The mobilisation of Geish as a Divine Craft has been through its observable nature – that it appears accessible, plus the attraction of queer/punk subversion from mainstream fashion. The audience also broadened through essential subculture photographers and zine-makers such as Mia Evans, Max Auberon, Rae Tait, Heloise Darcie.
f.24 Keelan and Ellie at ‘r u a goff’ (2023) by Mia Evans via @ahgeewiz
f.26,27 Cloud (2023) by Max Auberon
Pathojen hopes for a trash-Geish world, where all adornment in and outside fashion is praise to garbage. I draw parallels between her ideology and the work of William Morris, a maker and writer of the post-industrialisation arts and crafts movement, heavily influential within Britain and then-adjacent colonies. Morris believed beauty to be a necessity for wellbeing, for the collector of beautiful things, but more so for the producer; to Morris, the only ‘real art is the expression by man of his pleasure in labour,’ (Morris, 1879, via William Morris Gallery, 2023). The arts and crafts movement Morris spoke for was one of artisanship, in which refinement of skill was a joyful, meditative task for the practitioner, their knowledge is considered valuable, important to be maintained through generational teachings (Morris, 1888).
Though fundamentally similar as anti-mass production, trash-Geish diverges from artisanship in its focus on play (Darcie, 2022, p.9-10). Perfection is unknowable in trash-Geish, skills are not to be taught with divine clarity, but loosely, (if taught at all) the movement relishes in experimentation. There is no mistake or misstep in constructing trash-Geish because doesn’t try to make purely beautiful objects; ugliness, campness, is a common motif. Morris had a strong sense of binary division between the ugly and the beautiful, untransferable to the anti-binary practice of Geish (Starting Out, 2023). Though both despise the uniformity and reduced decadence in industrialised, mass-produced goods, for Morris this is in material, and for Geish people this is in idea. The material residue of industrialisation is prime material for the Geishaning, though its discarding, dirtying, metamorphosis from purchasable to scavenged item through the act of disposal, it becomes beautiful, ugly, camp, Geish (Soucie, 2023). Unlike Morris’s arts and crafts movement, as people crafting divinely, and only taking from abundance materials, our task is not to make more beautiful, decadent and richer things, but to make ugly, mass produced, detritus beautiful and soulful; embedded with play, care, and joy.