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Fashion (MA)

lilAC emanuel

four 3d scanned pavements floating in a white and grey gridded space

lilAC emanuel

(~ Amelia Cullen)

is a researcher, choreographer and designer working through the lens and embodiment of the foot and footwear beyond the foot. lilAC collages devices, uses digital tools and builds apparatus to reveal possible pathways and experiences through ethnographic studies in audio, visual and scent. Through philosophies that explore the idea that we are rooted in groundlessness, lilAC explores footwear as vehicles for mobilisation - if nothing is grounded in stability: mountains that seem unmovable are actually never-not-moving, borders and policies too.

lilAC is a Gravity Sketch Student Ambassador.



A open fridge with a slab of concrete inside cooling on a shelf

lilAC presents highlights of a body of research undertaken during the two-year MA programme. 

This body of work investigates the psychological and sensorial affect of footwear particularly whilst navigating urban spaces at night with research and experiment methodologies that have evolved throughout, presented in film, choreographies, vehicles and scent. 

Device Collages

Devices Collages presents a series of collaged instrument sketches used to research the altering, the amplification or the condensing of our senses whilst journey-making in various urban and sound architectures. These experiments are documented through ‘Affect Diaries’ and in audio and visual files presented as films ‘Foot-age’ and ‘Boot(ie) Call’ at RCA2023. These experiments revealing the journey of footsteps’ echoes, a breaking down of the footstep, the pluralities of co-existence, a spectrum of perspectives and desires particular to the individual. 

Foot-age

Foot-age is a video montage of clips filmed from multiple ethnographic perspectives of the shoe and journey making.

Shoe Scaletrix 

The Shoe Scalextric is a modular, filming track built in response to Foot-age to document the design development of footwear from the floor level, the tracks can follow footsteps, document shoes in a full 360 or be interchanged to choreograph different filming sequences. 

Eau de Pavement

A scent study of an urban wandering down Kingsland Road in East London developed in a collaboration hosted by International Flavours and Fragrance (IFF) with ISIPCA perfumers Jiajing Zhang and Lingxue Mu for a project titled ‘Scents for Nocturnal Wanderings.’ This project explored scent through a footwear lens and saw the development of custom skateboards titled Skunkboards that enabled one to take their nose to their feet and walk the journey of scent. 

A boot with a microphone, a shoe sole with a microphone, a boot with aurdino lilypad attached to the heel & an anechoic chamber
a phone call to a boot, a listening device in a heel of a black boot, a black shoe with a gopro taped to its toe
 
Foot-age
digital drawing of a 360 scalextric track circling a silver boot on a 3d scanned pavement
wooden scalextric tracks for filming shoes on pavement at night and being held by a tall white person with long brown hair
photograph of a person wearing blue jeans and black boots stepping on a kebab on a pavement at night
a bird-eye view pavement choreography with different scent subjects laid out - kebab, gum, skatol, urine, ylang
custom skateboard in the shape of a swimsuit with a circular head rest.
a white woman riding a skateboard on her belly sniffing at cigarettes on a printed paper pavement
on the left there are 2 small sample perfume bottles and on the right there is a clear jelly scent shoe sole on top of concret
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Royal College of Art

Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
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