While the fashion discourse now ascribes agency to garments and is fascinated with uncovering their biographies, the lives of nonhuman animals behind them are left unaddressed. In a western human-supremacist paradigm, nonhuman animals are relegated to objects of use – either materially or symbolically – that serve our humanness. Transforming them into garments and stereotypical representations, fashion is no exception.
Through ‘garment vivisection’ (the dissection of a ‘living’ garment) and assemblage (with the use of image and text fragments from a variety of sources), Telling Tremors reveals and proposes narratives about the nonhuman animals behind a garment made from animal materials, as beings with lives of their own.

This first edition, Telling Tremors: “Sheep Have Good Memories”, starts from a woollen sweater and tells a story of sheep.
Duration: 23 minutes.

Video: Femke de Vries (narrative, garment vivisection, voice) in close collaboration with Youngeun Sohn (filming and editing).
Printed script: designed by Youngeun Sohn and Femke de Vries.
Supported by Amarte.
Shown at New Order of Fashion (Wool (re)imagined) 2025, and UTS Gallery Sydney (“No place for mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive” curated by Ricarda Bigolin and Todd Robinson) 2026.

The garments used in these works are second hand, no new animal materials were sourced.