Kaja Grujic’s Hypnotic Dance Film
MA Fashion Futures graduate Kaja Grujic’s latest project, an experimental dance film 'Entangled', proves that she’s a true creative of our times – multidisciplinary, visionary, and unafraid to challenge the status quo.
Kaja Grujic’s film dissects the grave topic of today’s ecological crisis in a way that feels liberating, exhilarating, and optimistic and makes us question what the relationship between humans and nature should truly look like. LCF Stories talked to Kaja to learn more about how she decided to challenge our deeply rooted belief systems relating to nature, what future designers can take into consideration when creating, and why art can at times be more powerful than any policy.
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I saw that you participated in the Next Gen Assembly at the Global Fashion Summit, an event where environmental, social, and ethical issues facing the industry, people and the planet are discussed. What was that like?
That was amazing! LCF’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion and the Global Fashion Agenda put out an open call for anyone who wanted to be a part of it, and I applied. All this happened in Copenhagen over a couple of days, and it was fully sponsored. The Next Gen Assembly was about trying to include more youth voices into sustainable fashion forums, and it was cool to see everyone come from different parts of the industry and the world. My entry point was looking at how fashion can be used as a tool to change our relationship with nature. I had the opportunity to speak on a panel about various regulations of the fashion industry that the EU is implementing and how the industry now must familiarise itself with these changes. Because my background is so diverse, it felt like a full-circle moment connecting all the different disciplines I’ve studied into a story that I truly care about.
You mentioned your multidisciplinary background, having studied film and political science in Sciences Po in Paris and Columbia University in New York. How did you get to studying MA Fashion Futures at LCF?
My undergrad experience was split into a dual BA, spending the first two years in France and the other two in New York. I always wanted to do an education system that would provide me with different perspectives and types of teaching. With political science, I was eager to create change and initially set out to become a diplomat. However, I soon realised that even if policies are important, long-term changes emerge from mindset shifts. Art is sometimes a lot more powerful because policies most times come after those shifts. I decided if I wanted to create change I could use film to explore different ways to tell stories that change mindsets. But through all of this, my main focus was creating a new story for fashion.
Growing up, I went to a traditional academic school where fashion would often be looked down upon. I was a bit scared, but then I realised the importance of fashion because it touches every aspect of society – social, political, individual, and creative. In New York, I worked in the industry for a bit and saw how much waste there was. At first, it was cool and glamorous, but after a couple of months I realised it was not fulfilling at all. That led me to London where I knew I wanted to make a change using film and fashion.
In MA Fashion Futures, I started looking at the different levels of the fashion industry. Entering the different spheres made me realise that I’ve always wanted to look at things from different perspectives and be multidisciplinary. If you have different disciplines working in their own verticals, miscommunication happens, and nature is the one that takes the bunt of that in the end.
The film “Entangled” is part of your dissertation for MA Fashion Futures which looks at how fashion can bridge the gap between nature and humans. Why is it important to re-evaluate our relationship with nature and see it as a co-creator rather than a mere resource?
I’ve always had a close connection with nature on a personal level. On a professional level, the interest increased in the second week of my MA Fashion Futures where we had a guest lecture about the theory of deep ecology. It is a social movement that approaches sustainability from more of an ontological and social lens instead of focusing on legislation-driven changes. It suggests taking a step back from the Western point of view where see nature as separate from us and creating a sustainable world where humans are part of nature. With this lens, we were encouraged to assess what the point of all of this is because fashion undoubtedly is in an ecological crisis.
From then on, I went down a rabbit hole of different deep ecology theorists, and social movements that emerged from that; post-human anthropology, environmental feminism – this is where my poli science background emerged back again. Reassessing the relationship we have with nature is the way to go forward because it is deeply rooted in our belief systems. It is a whole systematic issue that needs to be addressed instead of simply blaming consumers.
The goal of the film is to expand our understanding of sustainable fashion beyond consumption and consumerism. What is your interpretation of sustainability in fashion?
A lot of policies and industry initiatives merely focus on how we consume, and that takes away beautiful aspects of the industry, for example, where material comes from, artisanal knowledge, ancestral knowledge of land, stories, and conversations behind them. When you think about sustainability, it’s not only about consumerism but also about highlighting the voices and stories that are hidden away. It's a more holistic way of looking at the industry. It’s also incredibly important to have more people at the decision-making table.
At the end of the day, the workers and farmers in the global south are most impacted by the industry yet they have limited say in the process. In my view, sustainable fashion is a political and social movement because it must tackle so many different spheres.
What does the title of your film, “Entangled”, signify to you?
For my MA thesis, I did an academic dissertation where I looked at how different disciplines can change the way we look at fashion. For example, I looked at indigenous linguistics, post-human anthropology, and environmental feminism, but I was worried that my written work would get stuck in academic echo chambers. So, the film was an attempt to take these ideas and make them accessible to a more general audience. That’s also why I wanted to do an experimental film. I wanted people to feel like it’s a space they can enter to reassess their own relationship. I didn’t want to tell them how they should feel, or even mention fashion for that matter, just simply let them question what nature means to them.
The name “Entangled” comes from one of the theorists whose work informed my thesis, Tim Ingold. He has a theory that suggests that human connection is just not a sum of individuals and the social, but what matters is the process of connecting. When you look at “Entangled”, there’s no distinction between nature and humans but rather everything is interconnected.
Why did you choose dancing as the best way to tell the story?
I love dance but I’m not a dancer myself. I didn’t want to merely tell people this is what I think, this is what nature is, and this is how it could be better. I wanted people to experience the film on their own terms, and dance can inspire thoughts in your own time. There’s room for space and imagination. Dance is also such a physical representation of a process and movements.
The film is split into three parts. At first, the dancers are seen as separate lines and their movements are very linear. The way it’s shot also makes them appear as separate from their surroundings, and there is no depth of field with the natural background. In the second part, the dancers are becoming curious about both nature and one another. In the third part, they are, in fact, entangled, and the camera no longer watches them but dances with them. In this way, the audience is not simply an observer but is also participating in the shift.
When we talk about nature, we usually talk about this very pure form of nature without humans and the urban. In the film, there are two main locations – Seven Sisters and LCF’s rooftop at John Prince’s Street. I wanted to intercut between these two locations to show that this movement and understanding of nature happens both in urban and natural spaces. That nature is everything.
The film features a monologue composed of texts by various authors like Tim Ingold, Edgar Allan Poe, Alan W. Watts, and others. How did you source and reassemble their words to formulate your own message?
I wanted it to be an interweaving of different thoughts that have existed before. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s like patchworking or weaving where you take different materials and make them something new, just this time around it was with words. I also used other quotes that I love but whose context I wanted to change. For example, in Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote “Into the air, what seemed corporeal melted as breath into the wind.” It was written in the context of a ghost, but I thought I could also talk about nature in that way. Suddenly, the meaning of that quote instantly changes.
I saw some behind-the-scenes images of the film’s shoot on your Instagram. What was the creative process like? Who did you collaborate with?
The reason why I love film is because it’s always so collaborative. This was also the first time I’ve worked with dancers. It was fascinating to see the acute awareness they have of their body that us, general people, don’t. I briefed them on the different stages of the film to make sure the choreography matched the narrative. It was fun working with Maria Santos and Giulia Angelini because the way they think about their body and space is so different from mine, and they could translate the story into physical movements.
With the cinematographer, Pascal Reinmann, we focused on him essentially dancing alongside the dancers in the last part of the film. It takes a lot of preparation to know how to walk through shots and make sure everything’s in focus. As for music, I worked with a friend from middle school, Daniel Winshall who is a jazz musician, and it was cool to translate the narrative once again from a musical perspective. Another one of my friends is a singer, Riah, so the voice in the film is hers. A friend from the MA Fashion Futures course was the stylist, Lia Leiva, and my roommate, Julia Martins, was the make-up artist.
Film is truly the medium where you can tell the story through different lenses, like dance, music, and camera. In a three-minute film, each second counts, so every decision was being made to tell the story better. For example, the way that the camera is organized is that in the beginning, no sky can be seen, but then the further you get, the more sky appears, and it gets freer and more open. The camera is also static in the beginning to simulate the sense of claustrophobia, but then in the end it's constantly moving and almost out of focus.
Can you tell me a bit more about the framework you developed that accompanies the film? How does such a toolkit help the designers of today and the future?
It’s a series of questions divided into five sections. The point of the framework is for designers to reflect on how their practice relates to nature. There’s also a workshop design kit that helps them assess their relationship with design, encouraging them to think about why they’re designing in the first place. My framework hopes to stand out among the rest because it truly emphasises our relation with nature, asking questions like how many touch points do you have with nature throughout the design process? How does it evolve with the human? Does it return to nature? Is it biodegradable?
The main task was translating these complex ideas with a rich theoretical background for people who don’t necessarily have extensive background knowledge. It’s about assessing yourself, seeing what’s not working, and finding a way forward together. We need to tell positive stories for people to feel like they have agency rather than simply saying “the world’s going to die.”
And lastly, what impact does recognition have on your work?
In a banal way, making a film and putting so much effort into it and no one seeing it is the worst feeling. The whole point is for people to see it and start having conversations about changing our relationship with nature. So, all the festivals and galleries are a great opportunity to have more eyes on the film, and the feedback has been so nice and very validating. You can also meet future collaborators. At a film festival in Milan, I met another filmmaker whose work also focuses on nature and now we’re working together on a new project about nature in cities. What I’m doing is a niche entry point, but these larger audiences solidify that people are listening.
Written for LCF Stories, 2023.