EXPERIMENTS IN FASHION AND ART

INSPIRATION

Experiments in Fashion and Art takes inspiration from E.A.T. - Experiments in Art and Technology, one of the most progressive initiatives of the post-WW2 period, which created a common ground for creative collaboration and knowledge exchange. It was the brainchild of Billy Klüver, an engineer who collaborated with artists from the early ‘60s, including Jean Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and many more. E.A.T. - Experiments in Art and Technology forged effective trans-disciplinary collaborations through industrial cooperation and support, becoming a nexus between the art world, academia, and industry. It also became a symbol of positivistic fascination with new technologies accompanied by critical, ethical, and educative concerns.

The legacy of this exciting initiative resonates today, raising the question of the need and urgency for stimulating open-ended research and the interconnection between like-minded creatives.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Experiments in Fashion and Art is a project that aims to catalyse encounters between trans-disciplinary practitioners whose fields of reference are fashion and art. It accentuates the word “experiment” as an indicator of the focus on the process, research, and immaterial outcomes as much as material ones. It is imagined as a project in progress, which will change forms and formats, passing from discursive to performative, to exhibitive, and back. It will involve, infiltrate, and occupy different spaces and domains of contemporary art and fashion: institutions, markets, and independent scenes. It will seek to interweave research paths and positions spread across disciplines and geographies in order to map a phenomenon that is still somehow out of focus. Trans-disciplinary practices situated in the liminal field between fashion and art are numerous and diffused but remain scattered, poorly visible, and under-considered. However, they are the most vital, innovative, and propositive contribution to contemporary fashion discourse and productions. These practices occupy niche areas and often thrive within academic and educational institutions, but less often are included in the mainstream art institutions or the fashion industry. Can this gap be bridged? Is there a way to open channels through which these three domains can nurture each other? Can we find the next Billy Klüvers in the industries connected with fashion, creativity, and culture?

CONCEPTUAL FRAME

Experiments in Fashion and Art aim to address research and productions that don’t fully belong to either art or fashion but are somewhere in between. Numerous terms seek to “define” the contours of this kind of practice: critical, expanded, unruly, outlier… One of my earlier projects operated with the term “transfashional”, which wanted to indicate all those conceptual and material relations that connect fashion with art, design, architecture, performance, film, etc. Fashion theorist Caroline Evans writes about “fashion design criticality” inherent to the design process.

Indeed, Experiments in Fashion and Art wants to address, first and foremost, design practices that produce concepts rather than products and that discuss, deconstruct, and destabilise fashion’s conventions and narratives, at least those played out within the mainstream industry. Yet, this project also wants to provoke possible encounters, dialogues, and collaborations between artists, designers, trans-disciplinary practitioners, “in-betweeners”, curators, theoreticians, and generally creatives who operate within academia as well as those who are more involved with the cultural and fashion industry.

REALISATION AND OUTCOMES

Experiments in Fashion and Art is conceived as a project in progress, which should develop and unfold on the principle of the domino: each session should produce an idea, concept, or theme that will seed the next session.

The first kick-off session would be an encounter, discussion, and occasion for brainstorming, leading to a second session with more performative and exhibitive features.

DOBRILA DENEGRI

Born in Belgrade, Dobrila Denegri lives and works in Italy and Serbia. She graduated from La Sapienza University in Rome and is an art historian specialising in contemporary art.
Her activity as a curator and writer began in the late 90s. Since then, she has curated numerous projects for international public and private institutions and Biennial manifestations in Venice and other cities. She curated solo and group exhibitions about performance (Marina Abramović, “Theatre of Life”), artistic agency and social engagement (Alfredo Jaar, Thomas Bayrle, Gustav Metzger, Michal Rovner, “Arena”), and ambient-related interventions (Ernesto Neto, Massimo Bartolini, Tomas Saraceno, Victoria Vesna, “Spaceship Earth”).

From 2002 to 2008, she was a curator at MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. She curated the “Art Highlights” lecture & talk program involving artists, curators, museum directors, fashion and product designers, and art writers. This program involved leading figures of the international art world and anticipated themes of curating, post-colonialism, and global art through a focus on Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and Eastern Europe.

Understanding curating as a form of cultural activism, she co-organised “Real Presence” (2001 - 2010), an international platform for emerging generations that brought together more than 1,500 young artists from over 100 academies and universities worldwide.
In 2010, she became the Artistic Director of the Contemporary Art Centre in Torun, Poland. For five years, she has led an interdisciplinary exhibition and public program that examines the relationship between art, science, and the environment.

From 2016 to 2020, she curated the research platform “Transfashional” (https:// transfashional.com), which mapped fashion-related artistic practices and advocated for the promotion and sustainability of fashion-based transdisciplinary productions within art institutions and museums. The relationships between art and fashion, as well as fashion curating, are also the focus of her teaching at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (2008/2010), Polimoda (2010/2022), Istituto Marangoni (2019/2024), Academy of Fine Arts Catanzaro (since 2022), and NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome (since 2024). She coordinates the MA programme in fashion curating at IED Florence and Milan (since 2026).