On Shoddy Material: Textile Waste, Self- Fashioning, and the Material Regeneration of Clothing under Capitalism

This talk explores the history and future potential of a material called shoddy. Shoddy was invented in the early-nineteenth century: the product of an industrial system for the regeneration of old clothing and wool waste. Shoddy quickly became a vital medium for fashioning goods ranging from agricultural fertilizer to wedding attire, as well as a vector for negative cultural and corporeal associations of sickness and inferiority. Shell argues for shoddy’s singular identity as a vital medium for both cultural and textile production and explores its material and metaphorical potential for the imagining and planning of possible futures.

The speaker, Hanna Rose Shell, studies aesthetics, media archaeology, textiles, and the interface of art and science; her scholarship takes the form of text and film. She is a Professor of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts, and Art & Art History at the University of Colorado Boulder. Shell’s book on camouflage, Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance, was published by Zone Books. Shell has written widely in scholarly and popular journals on subjects including taxidermy, waste processing, and the history of chronophotography. Her 2020 book, SHODDY: From Devil's Dust to the Renaissance of Rags (University of Chicago Press), examines recycled textiles as transformative media forms through the lenses of aesthetics, material culture, history, and critical theory. It dovetails with a series of experimental documentary shorts and a textile installation in the Czech Republic on the subject of waste, recycling and old clothes. Her films and media works have appeared worldwide, at art and film venues including The Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Machine Project, Slamdance, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, and the Zimmerli Art Museum.