Workshop Showing: Pedlar Film

For the second workshop i showed a short film of me selling fake handbags on the streets of London and Manchester. I was wearing a dress made from colourful plastic bags and gaffer tape and the hand bags were versions of designer handbags, but fabricated also from plastic bags, food wrappers, tape etc. Through making these bags i have become wrapped up in the character of the street pedlar and the spaces which he/she inhabits. It is these junctures such as ports, coastal towns, the egalitarian space of the beach, which interest me, as i have been thinking about washed up cultural detritus, (whether objects or people) and the process of piecing together of disparate fragments, resulting in the creation of new cultural meanings.

The feedback from the rest of the group was positive and some of the things that arose were the idea of trade, which although i had not originally given much attention to, i think is pertinent to my research, particularly if i set up the market stall. People also mentioned as interesting: the relationships i had formed on the street, the contradictory nature of the costume itself being at once rubbishy, yet something almost regal/graceful about it as it allowed me to glide around the streets and Magda reminded me to return to Bakhtin, as she claimed there to be something carnivalesque about the whole thing.

Below are some fuzzy stills taken from the film...