June 23, 2025

We Are Art People in conversation with Pascale Gatzen

1 hour 37 minutes

Pascale Gatzen is not someone who you can bind with words. She moves freely across and within spaces of education, pattern making, commoning and compassionate communication. She continues to seek opportunities for and to shape the conditions under which people learn together.

In the '90s, Pascale was a member of a group of fashion designers known as Le Cri Néerlandais (“The Dutch Cry”) including Saskia van Drimmelen, Viktor Horsting, Rolf Snoeren et al. — and the first Dutch designers to present their collections in Paris. Her garments have been included in early editions of Purple Magazine, photographed by Mark Borthwick and presented in spaces of cross-disciplinary dialogue. Alongside a practice of making garments, Pascale’s place in education, aligned on making and situating fashion as an expression of being — has included developing an alternative fashion program at the Parsons School of Design in New York City and she previously led the Fashion Design Master’s program at ArtEZ, Netherlands.

Our conversation dances between generative projects Pascale has contributed to; including The Linen Project, a collective endeavor to reintroduce small-scale local flax cultivation to the Netherlands, and a clothing workshop Pascale facilitated with guards at Art Tower Mito, in Japan. Interspersed, with the acknowledgment of and observing feelings and needs, reflective of Marshall Rosenberg’s teachings of Non-Violent Communication (NVC). Pascale has recognized this practice to be a vital design for human communication, an opportunity to meet each other with empathy and authentic connection.

Pascale makes and wears her clothing.

Links:

The Linen Project https://thelinenproject.online/

Friends of Light https://www.friendsoflight.net/

Art Tower Mito, Japan https://mitoguards.blogspot.com/

Show notes:

"If ‘commoning’ has any meaning, it must be the production of ourselves as a common subject." - Silvia Federici

Intentional communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community

Gana Community, Statan Island https://geo.coop/articles/40-years-community

NYCNVC https://www.nycnvc.org/thom-bond

Hannah Arendt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt

Eric Fromm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm