2017

DOBRILA DENEGRI: IN WHAT WAYS CAN PRODUCTIONS THAT FUSE ELEMENTS OF ART AND FASHION BE DEFINED, CONCEPTUALISED, AND LEGITIMISED? 

As a curator working in the arts but also at the intersection of fashion and the arts, Dobrila Denegri's perception of cultural production encompasses a broader view of things. For the exhibition “Transfashional”, she brought together various positions representative of what she labels as a post-interdisciplinary approach to creative work. 
In the project, artists and fashion designers from Austria, Poland, and the UK participated: Manora Auersperg & Konrad Strutz, Anna-Sophie Berger, Christina Dörfler-Raab & Jasmin Schaitl, Lisa Edi, Afra Kirchdorfer, Kate Langrish-Smith, Maximilian Mauracher & Bernhard Eiling, Ana Rajčević, Anna Schwarz, Lara Torres, Janusz Noniewicz, Dominika Wirkowska, Wojciech Małolepszy, Robert Pludra, and the Fashion and Product Design departments of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
The migrating exhibition, previously shown in Warsaw and London, evolves into a new form for its third chapter in Vienna and will surprise visitors with a range of meanings that go beyond the boundaries of fashion and art. Given its history and the roots of cultural movements originating in the city, Vienna is the ideal setting for the trans-fashional vision Mrs Denegri envisions.

Daniel Kalt: How long did preparations for the exhibition take?

Dobrila Denegri: From the very start, “Transfashional” was conceived as an exhibition-in-progress, evolving from one presentation to another through the creation of new works and the opportunity for dialogue and collaboration among participants. The initiative began in Vienna and was hosted by Die Angewandte, where participants were invited to a session of collective brainstorming that also involved special guests like Hussein Chalayan, Barbara Putz-Plecko, Monica Titton, and Beatrice Jaschke representing the hosting institution, as well as curators Susanne Neuburger from mumok and Jose Teunissen, who is directing the upcoming fashion biennial in Arnhem. Preparations are an ongoing process, which started in autumn 2016 and continues until the next presentation of the exhibition in Vienna in December. The exhibition will tour several other museums across Europe throughout 2018 in its final form. 

DK: How did you get in touch with all the participating institutions? 

DD: Everything started a few years ago when I was still artistic director of the Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, Poland, and when Martin Meisel, then newly appointed director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, proposed to do a collaborative project with young Austrian and Polish artists. The first session, entitled “Hosted Simply”, involved mainly former students from Warsaw Art Academy and Vienna's University of Applied Arts. 
Then we challenged ourselves to do something larger, more articulated and out of the strictly artistic domain, reaching towards fashion, or at least, those most cutting-edge, experimental, and conceptual aspects of it. I was curious to find interesting and daring young talents. For this reason, it was important to address the right partners. Frances Corner, head of the London College of Fashion (LCF), was trained in art, and she gave a strong artistic and socially engaged imprint to many of the masters there, so the LCF looked like an ideal partner to add. Barbara Putz-Plecko, head of the textile department at Vienna's Angewandte, is also an artist with an extremely broad and innovative academic approach. Hussein Chalayan, visiting professor at the university's fashion department, epitomises the crossing of art and fashion with his coherent and daring way to inject complexity into fashion design. 

DK: What was most fascinating for you about the project? 

DD: For me as a curator who addressed fashion only on a few occasions previously, the possibility of exploring the production of emerging artists and designers was the most challenging part, and also most challenging was the possibility to explore productions of emerging artists/designers and try to come up with concept which could conjugate practices which are critically approaching the current state of fashion. 

DK: How did the collaboration with Barbara Putz-Plecko come about? 

DD: As a vice-dean of Angewandte, Barbara is very engaged in international collaborations. Thanks to her and her team of collaborators, I could get to know some really good young artists emerging from various departments of the university. In the second stage of research, I got interested in the way she broadens the academic approach of textiles through artistic and performative inputs. Works of some of the artists coming from this department led me towards the idea of “Transfashional”. 

DK: Vienna will be the third chapter of the exhibition: did you adapt or alter it for the new venue? Were there any changes from its London to its Warsaw form? 

DD: Yes, the exhibition in Vienna will be like a new chapter, with some works reaching their final stages. For example, in close collaboration with information artist and software engineer Bernhard Eiling, the artist Maximilian Mauracher created a project entitled “NOUS001”. It is a software capable of learning and associative reasoning, designed for the exhibition in London. Over the months of development and touring, “Transfashional” evolved from an initial stage of randomly collecting visual data to the final one, where its neuronal network is meant to become capable of generating patterns and textile sketches. This is intended to give a preview, but also other artists, such as Manora Auersperg in collaboration with Konrad Strutz, Lara Torres, Anna Schwarz, and the Polish group, will be presenting something new. From the first presentation at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London to the larger one at the Centre of Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw, all involved artists have produced unreleased work.   

DK: Talking about a trans-fashional movement suggests it extends beyond fashion: what motivated the choice of the title? What lies beyond fashion? Is your main aim to explore ways of merging fashion and the arts? 

DD: “Transfashional” is a newly created term to which we wanted to attribute meaning through this project and its developments. After a year and a half-long journey, a term that initially appeared as a floating signifier started to outline its potential meanings. Within this context, transfashional might stand for practices that address the notion of fashion from a conceptual and ontological perspective. They aim to highlight discursive, critical, and engaged positions, using various forms of visual language built on the intersection of several creative disciplines: fashion, art, film, performance… Traditionally, fashion, as well as design or any other form of applied art, would focus on the production of something that is not only material and palpable but also functional and usable. Materiality and functionality are here juxtaposed with or replaced by categories that question or even negate their very purpose. Terms such as “undesign”, “unmaking”, “post-producing” are becoming part of the agenda, inspiring those more progressive and critical creative communities to find responses not only to what should be produced, but how and most importantly why. 
In this sense, fashion and design are claiming the same prerogatives attributed to art: to raise awareness, influence behaviour, and set standards of values—most importantly, those ethical ones.

DK: The question is one that is often asked, but which view do you hold: is fashion an art form, at least in its most avant-garde expressions?

DD: There is certainly an artistic value in what some of the most cutting-edge designers are doing. But what I see as a more compelling question is: in what ways can productions that fuse elements of art and fashion be defined, conceptualised, and legitimised? Creatively, these productions are always most intriguing and provocative because they place us in a state of uncertainty; we do not know what they are, to which category they belong, or how they should be named. 

DK: Is it a matter of finding the right words? 

DD: I think it is easier to define what is pure art or pure fashion, but we lack names for all those things in between. Not having this vocabulary and categorisation means that creative people, who do challenging things, have to struggle more to continue their work and to get not only legitimised but also supported. Unfortunately, mainstream fashion and the fashion industry don't seem to provide as much space and backing as they could.

DK: Do you think that Vienna is still a place with a distinct fashion sensibility, which might stem from the city's rich history and past that comprises a movement such as Wiener Werkstätte?

DD: Absolutely! One of the most notable features of Austria’s leading fashion designers is their strong connection to art, both as a source of inspiration and as a reference, as well as a field for direct collaboration. From Helmut Lang to current brands and designers like Wendy Jim, House of Very Island, and their close links with Jakob Lena Knebl, Wally Salner, or younger artists such as Anna-Sophie Berger with a distinct fashion background, all are exceptional. This deep bond between fashion designers and artists—who explore the relationship between fashion and art through their work—can be seen as one of the legacies of early Modernism. I believe that in no other cultural context is there such a rich network of relationships and collaborations between art and fashion as in Austria.

DK: How important are interdisciplinary approaches to further fashion and create truly new impulses? 

DD: It is not only about new impulses, which certainly emerge from the cross-pollination of different knowledges and production processes; it’s also about a need for new categories for this “in-between” of productions and practices. For over half a century, the boundaries between different creative disciplines have been dissolving, and we now find ourselves in a condition that could be termed “post-interdisciplinary”. As disciplines such as art, architecture, design, fashion design, etc., become so closely interrelated, they generate objects that are not only uncategorizable but sometimes are scarcely recognisable. This is particularly interesting because they challenge us with questions such as: Is it usable? Is it wearable? What is their purpose other than to evoke emotions, reflections or ideas? We can talk about productions of things that exist simply as activators: their function is to push us towards new interpretative approaches or different performative behaviours. If in the realm of design theory the term “things as ideas” (Robert Stadler) has emerged, in the context of this project, it can be expanded to “clothes as ideas” or “adornments as ideas”. Even if the functionality of these things (garments, adornments, objects) sometimes remains opaque, they seem to channel quests for new forms of categorisation and, ultimately, different paradigms.

DK: One of the questions raised by “Transfashional” regards the ways fashion can contribute to shaping our world and society: how can it, indeed? 

DD: It’s a question. To borrow the words of Jose Teunissen in her recent statement about the concept of the upcoming event in Arnhem replacing the city's biennial and bearing the title Searching for the New Luxury: “Fashion no longer seems to be in touch with the standards and values of our current time. It still presents the image of a world of classic glamour and status, a luxury dream that is no longer appealing or relevant nowadays. (…) Something has to change, that much is clear, but nobody knows how or where to begin.”
What became clear to me while working with participants of “Transfashional” is the worldviews of these new generations predict that change. Perhaps also because they have little choice. While older generations valued real estate, cars, antiques, and fine art, nowadays, more valuable are time, health, data, reputation, and wisdom. Art is a powerful creator, and fashion is an effective communicator of values, making them potential tools to shift mindsets, which should occur. 

DK: What does the future of fashion look like? Will it still be about designers creating garments for shoppers, or do you think that there will be new ways of distribution and schools of thought? 

DD: This is inevitable, simply because we are on the cusp of what is called the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformations that science and technology are bringing are profound and unstoppable. However, what we still observe is old capitalist logic being channelled through new devices. A good example is Uber, recently banned in the UK, launched as a way to self-manage work and time: now it is ending because it has become an even more exploitative mechanism than all the others. Profit flows only to those who own the tech and network, while workers remain poor, isolated, and powerless. 
So, we do need new schools of thought, I’d say: visions of how technology and economy are turned back to being mere means again so that society and individual gain back more central position.   

DK: How can today's avant-garde contribute to the creation of new schools of thought? And how can you translate an uncompromising avant-garde perspective to suit the needs of the commercial fashion system? 

DD: Narrowing your question to the scope of our project, the role of the school is truly important. Supporting an initiative that provides a platform for practitioners who struggle to resist the pressures of commercial demands and maintain their research at the cutting edge might be a small step. A second step could be to secure more space and prominence within institutional frameworks that guide art and other contemporary expressions. Or even to establish spaces whose primary role is to affirm and promote fashion-related practices that are more conceptual or critical, similar to what the Kunsthalle represents, but dedicated to fashion design. Generally, recognising and embracing the cultural capital inherent in these forms of “making fashion” and treating them as valuable, even if not necessarily wearable. 

DK: If there is one precise point the exhibition tries to make, how would you sum it up? 

DD: It began by addressing the question of categorisation, or the inadequacy of existing categories for those productions that lie on the edge of something functional, wearable, knowable, and already linguistically defined. “Trans” here implies moving beyond established categories. What I found fascinating in this vague terrain of “beyond” is a series of notions like “unmaking”, “un-design”, “things-as-ideas”, “post-productivity” which seem to plead not only for alternative ways but also for different principles for making fashion, design, and other forms of creative expressions. These notions are presented by artists, designers, and theoreticians who are part of this project, or who might join in its second edition. So rather than summarising, I would prefer to initiate a second round.