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Pauline Agustoni & Satomi Minoshima

Pauline Agustoni & Satomi Minoshima

Craft Portrait: Dorozome

Name(s)

Pauline Agustoni (1996)
Satomi Minoshima (1989)

Employment

40% freelance designer, 60% independent designer

Education

Bachelor of Arts, Design Academy Eindhoven, 2019, (NL)

Title

Craft Portrait: Dorozome

Year of creation

2019–2021

Place of creation

Eindhoven (NL)

Context of creation

Commission, research, diploma project, personal etc. ECAL, 2022

Collaborators

Yukihito Kanai (Dorozome artisan and mentor), Amami Oshima (JP); Matiss Balodis (mechanical designer and engineer), Eindhoven (NL)

Item(s) shown

Textile installation, sample display, video, publication

Dimensions

Textile installation: 800 × 800 × 4,500 mm; Sample display: 1,000 × 40 × 1,600 mm; Video screen: 550 × 50 × 300 mm; Publication: 170 × 10 × 240 mm

Formats/Duration

Video: .mp4, 1280 × 720 px, 12 min 0 sec.

Material(s)

Headphones, book made of paper

Material supplier(s)

Textiles: Kanai Kougei, Amami Oshima (JP)

Pauline Agustoni and Satomi Minoshima teamed up with craftsman Yukihito Kanai and Dorozome, artisans from dyeing workshop Kanai Kougei, to develop a textile installation that displays the process movements and colours of Dorozome, a traditional Japanese craft in which threads are repeatedly dyed in wood bark and mud until they reach a deep black colour. • Enriched by a three-week research trip to the island of Amami Oshima, the duo developed a scenography that expresses the craft’s repetitive nature and unique aesthetics. With their installation and publication introducing eleven interviews of Dorozome artisans, they aim to communicate about crafts in a way that does not nurture exoticism or nostalgia but highlights Dorozome’s profound relationship with its environment and culture. As designers, they believe in the alternative, counter-cultural, almost rebel potential of crafts to resist current, damaging material production systems.