Founded in Berlin in January of 2024, PSYCHIC MENDING invites participants to transform a personal garment in a collective space with assistance, advice and companionship from myself and the community that gathers. It is akin to a traditional sewing circle, which was historically a space for women to repair and make clothing while fostering social bonds. PSYCHIC MENDING magnifies the relationship between the social and the object, expanding the sewing circle into a place of exchange, where we reinvent our clothing to help us reinvent ourselves, blurring material and mental alterations.

It’s a socially engaged practice that uses the clothing object as a tool to build and shape new selves and new communities, and it operates on three imbricated levels: it is a practical opportunity to repair, with utilitarian ends that touch upon the urgent need to consider recycling and upcycling as pathways to new futures; it is a happening, an opportunity to build community through an exchange of skills and materials; and ultimately it is self-reflexive, for the object that we repair, and which brings people together physically, is the powerful clothing object that itself engenders new selves.

PSYCHIC MENDING

You are cordially invited to join costume designer and artist Stacey Berman for a communing of clothes, bodies and brains. Spend an afternoon collaborating on garment transformations, swapping and inventions as we refashion ourselves, together.

Bring a clothing project you want to finish, or a project you don’t know how to start. Bring a garment you want to change or a garment you want to trade. Bring yourself and make yourself into someone new.

There will be a sewing machine, an overlock machine, an ironing board, an iron, and miscellaneous thread & fabric scraps available to use. If you have additional tools or supplies, you are encouraged to share them with the party.

Let’s help each other through alterations, both material and mental.

Everyone is welcome.