2018
DOBRILA DENEGRI: "TRANSFASHIONAL" REFERS TO PRACTICES THAT QUESTION FASHION FROM A CONCEPTUAL AND ONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Adrianna Afra Gruszecka: What is your current job as a curator? We found most of your interviews from 2015. A lot could change during this time.
Dobrila Denegri: Regarding your area of interest, which is fashion curation, I could talk about one of my recent projects centred on fashion and fashion-related artistic practices.
It is titled “Transfashional” and includes exhibitions, workshops, and panel discussions.
The first edition began in 2016 with a workshop in Vienna, featuring a group of emerging designers and artists affiliated with London College of Fashion, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Fashion Department of Warsaw Fine Arts Academy.
The theme was “Exhibiting Fashion,” and among the guest speakers was Hussein Chalayan, one of the most remarkable fashion designers who works across disciplines and has realised some of the most experimental and innovative fashion presentations within contemporary art venues. Following this initial brainstorming session, exhibitions took place at the ACF in London, the Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw, and MQ in Vienna.
This spring, the exhibition will be held in Sweden, and it will subsequently be expanded in its second edition, with an increased number of participants, venues, and events.
When it was conceived, the entire project was designed as an exhibition-in-progress aimed at defining a newly coined term, ‘transfashional’.
After a year and a half, this term, which initially appeared as a floating signifier, began to reveal its potential meanings. In this context, “Transfashional” might refer to practices that approach fashion from a conceptual and ontological perspective.
They seek to highlight discursive, critical, and engaged positions, utilising various forms of visual language rooted in the intersection of multiple creative disciplines: fashion, art, film, performance…
Traditionally, fashion, along with design or other forms of applied art, has focused on producing something tangible, functional, and usable.
Here, materiality and functionality are contrasted or replaced by categories that question or even deny their essential purpose.
Terms like “undesign,” “unmaking,” and “post-producing” are becoming part of the agenda, inspiring progressive and critical creative communities to explore not only what should be produced but also how and, most importantly, why.
In this way, fashion and design are asserting the same prerogatives as art: to raise awareness, influence behaviour, and establish value standards, especially ethical ones.
More on: www.transfashional.com & https://www.mqw.at/blog/going-beyond-fashion/
AAG: What do you think about the combination of costume designer and fashion designer? Is it possible for an artist to be a fashion designer at the same time? In the university environment, it is often divided into two different functions. What is fashion for you, and what is a theatrical costume? Are they two separate worlds, or are they related to each other by a structure?
DD: Conventionally, these roles are separate and have been kept that way for a long time. Fashion is an industry with its own set of rules and regulations that are heavily influenced by the market. The space for “artistic” exploits by the mainstream fashion designers can be found within the presentations of season collections, when a fashion show can shift into performance or some other format, as experimented by Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Viktor&Rolf and many others since 90s onwards.
Costume design, especially if made for experimental theatre or dance, can become an extraordinary laboratory for fashion designers as well, because they can work with a major degree of freedom, unbound by usual commercial constraints.
In this context, more than the norm, it is interesting to look at the exceptions: collaboration between Rei Kawakubo and Merce Cunningham, for example, when the famous and heavily discussed collection “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” Spring/Summer 1997, all of a sudden gained a new sense seen on the dancing bodies. What seemed intentional deformation of the “natural” anatomy of the body through Kawakubo’s garments in the dance-performance became a very interesting scenic/choreographic element. This is just one of many possible examples that come to mind.
Recently, Chalayan himself co-directed and choreographed a theatre play entitled “Gravity Fatigue” where his garments/costumes became one of the principal elements in a narrative revolving around questions of identity, body, and displacement.
Since cross-overs between art and fashion are becoming more and more present, academia is opening up to experimental and research-oriented approaches, too.
One of the most extraordinary cases that I know is at Borås Textile University, where Prof. Clemens Thornquist is carrying on workshops on body and space… so that creating fashion actually becomes a research-based practice where the process counts more than a product.
If you look, for example, work by Linnea Bågander, who considers herself a fashion designer, you will see something that conventionally can be understood as costume for the dance performance, but it is much more than that: it is a study about wearing a garment, about that subtile and intimate space between body and textile which can be full of movement and emotions. That is what she visualises in her films.
I’m really glad that “Transfashional” in its upcoming edition will include this research and show how barriers between academic categories are breaking down. Now we need new denominations for these transdisciplinary practices.
More on: http://www.hb.se/en/Research/News-and-events/Magazine-1866/Articles/2015/Clemens-Thornquist---The-philosopher-of-fashion/
/on Linnea Bågander: http://cargocollective.com/linneabagander/Experiments-Research/
AAG: What are you guided by, first of all, fashion exhibitions? Visual attractiveness for the viewer or the content of the exhibition?
DD: Generally speaking, for me, an exhibition is interesting if these two aspects are in equilibrium. But, since I am an art historian and curator who worked in the art field, my approach to making an exhibition about fashion and fashion-related practices is more focused on concepts than on the visual setting, scenography and storytelling.
So, in the case of exhibitions I did, I would usually reduce to the minimum props and various visual elements which can construct narration, mostly because I’m not very much into showing clothes and talking about their sartorial, ethnological or anthropological aspects.
When I did “Wonderingmode” at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, I was driven by certain ontological questions, such as: what is fashion and how it can be shown beyond clothes and addressed as a cultural phenomenon.
Now, with “Transfashional” all this is pushed even further, since participants are working in the liminal field between fashion and other disciplines. Formally, works that have been presented or even realised especially for this project are more concepts, proposals, reflections, experimentations with material and conceptual aspects of fashion. This line was also traced by my initial intention to present exhibitions within the frame of contemporary art institutions.
In this project, fashion was presented as art, so to speak.
On the other hand, what we have observed since the 1990s is a gradual shift from what were once called “costume museums” to what is now referred to as “fashion museums.”
When costume museums like those at the V&A or the Metropolitan opened in the late 1800s, their initial collections consisted of items regarded as historical documents, reflecting ethnological, anthropological, sociological, and cultural changes that societies had undergone over centuries. However, since the late 1990s, there has been a noticeable change: some costume museums have been renamed as fashion museums, with a focus on contemporary fashion and active designers taking centre stage.
After blockbuster exhibitions dedicated to Alexander McQueen at the MET and V&A, showcasing fashion in visually compelling settings, this approach has become essential. Such curatorial strategies are suitable for retrospectives on the creative journeys of celebrated designers and are aimed at broad audiences.
Currently, my interest lies in exploring intriguing, innovative, and critical practices that lie within or outside the fashion system.
My approach to presenting these fashion and art works reflects their intrinsic “nature,” avoiding elaborate scenography and visual effects.
AAG: What would you advise two novices in the world of probation officers?
DD: If you are up to setting an exhibition with some fashion items, look first to how other fashion curators addressed these issues in the recent past. Fashion curating is a young and emerging sub-section of curatorial studies, so there are not so many study books to consult.
There are, as far as I know, two readers entitled “Fashion Curating” and in the catalogue of “Wonderingmode” I published my interviews with some of the pioneers and authorities in this field, such as Judith Clark, Maria Luisa Frisa, Valerie Steele and some others.
It is also good to look at Oliver Saillard and his approach to curating, since he merged exhibition and performance in a very interesting way.
But apart from literature, what's most exciting is working directly with designers/artists, listening and learning from them, since an exhibition is always a transposition of artistic concepts into visual and spatial forms.
More on fashion curating: “Fashion Curating - Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond”, Editor(s): Annamari Vänskä, Hazel Clark and “Fashion Curating—La Mode Exposée: Understanding Fashion Through the Exhibition” edited by Luca Marchetti
2018
DOBRILA DENEGRI: "TRANSFASHIONAL" REFERS TO PRACTICES THAT QUESTION FASHION FROM A CONCEPTUAL AND ONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Adrianna Afra Gruszecka: What is your current job as a curator? We found most of your interviews from 2015. A lot could change during this time.
Dobrila Denegri: Regarding your area of interest, which is fashion curation, I could talk about one of my recent projects centred on fashion and fashion-related artistic practices.
It is titled “Transfashional” and includes exhibitions, workshops, and panel discussions.
The first edition began in 2016 with a workshop in Vienna, featuring a group of emerging designers and artists affiliated with London College of Fashion, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Fashion Department of Warsaw Fine Arts Academy.
The theme was “Exhibiting Fashion,” and among the guest speakers was Hussein Chalayan, one of the most remarkable fashion designers who works across disciplines and has realised some of the most experimental and innovative fashion presentations within contemporary art venues. Following this initial brainstorming session, exhibitions took place at the ACF in London, the Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw, and MQ in Vienna.
This spring, the exhibition will be held in Sweden, and it will subsequently be expanded in its second edition, with an increased number of participants, venues, and events.
When it was conceived, the entire project was designed as an exhibition-in-progress aimed at defining a newly coined term, ‘transfashional’.
After a year and a half, this term, which initially appeared as a floating signifier, began to reveal its potential meanings. In this context, “Transfashional” might refer to practices that approach fashion from a conceptual and ontological perspective.
They seek to highlight discursive, critical, and engaged positions, utilising various forms of visual language rooted in the intersection of multiple creative disciplines: fashion, art, film, performance…
Traditionally, fashion, along with design or other forms of applied art, has focused on producing something tangible, functional, and usable.
Here, materiality and functionality are contrasted or replaced by categories that question or even deny their essential purpose.
Terms like “undesign,” “unmaking,” and “post-producing” are becoming part of the agenda, inspiring progressive and critical creative communities to explore not only what should be produced but also how and, most importantly, why.
In this way, fashion and design are asserting the same prerogatives as art: to raise awareness, influence behaviour, and establish value standards, especially ethical ones.
More on: www.transfashional.com & https://www.mqw.at/blog/going-beyond-fashion/
AAG: What do you think about the combination of costume designer and fashion designer? Is it possible for an artist to be a fashion designer at the same time? In the university environment, it is often divided into two different functions. What is fashion for you, and what is a theatrical costume? Are they two separate worlds, or are they related to each other by a structure?
DD: Conventionally, these roles are separate and have been kept that way for a long time. Fashion is an industry with its own set of rules and regulations that are heavily influenced by the market. The space for “artistic” exploits by the mainstream fashion designers can be found within the presentations of season collections, when a fashion show can shift into performance or some other format, as experimented by Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Viktor&Rolf and many others since 90s onwards.
Costume design, especially if made for experimental theatre or dance, can become an extraordinary laboratory for fashion designers as well, because they can work with a major degree of freedom, unbound by usual commercial constraints.
In this context, more than the norm, it is interesting to look at the exceptions: collaboration between Rei Kawakubo and Merce Cunningham, for example, when the famous and heavily discussed collection “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” Spring/Summer 1997, all of a sudden gained a new sense seen on the dancing bodies. What seemed intentional deformation of the “natural” anatomy of the body through Kawakubo’s garments in the dance-performance became a very interesting scenic/choreographic element. This is just one of many possible examples that come to mind.
Recently, Chalayan himself co-directed and choreographed a theatre play entitled “Gravity Fatigue” where his garments/costumes became one of the principal elements in a narrative revolving around questions of identity, body, and displacement.
Since cross-overs between art and fashion are becoming more and more present, academia is opening up to experimental and research-oriented approaches, too.
One of the most extraordinary cases that I know is at Borås Textile University, where Prof. Clemens Thornquist is carrying on workshops on body and space… so that creating fashion actually becomes a research-based practice where the process counts more than a product.
If you look, for example, work by Linnea Bågander, who considers herself a fashion designer, you will see something that conventionally can be understood as costume for the dance performance, but it is much more than that: it is a study about wearing a garment, about that subtile and intimate space between body and textile which can be full of movement and emotions. That is what she visualises in her films.
I’m really glad that “Transfashional” in its upcoming edition will include this research and show how barriers between academic categories are breaking down. Now we need new denominations for these transdisciplinary practices.
More on: http://www.hb.se/en/Research/News-and-events/Magazine-1866/Articles/2015/Clemens-Thornquist---The-philosopher-of-fashion/
/on Linnea Bågander: http://cargocollective.com/linneabagander/Experiments-Research/
AAG: What are you guided by, first of all, fashion exhibitions? Visual attractiveness for the viewer or the content of the exhibition?
DD: Generally speaking, for me, an exhibition is interesting if these two aspects are in equilibrium. But, since I am an art historian and curator who worked in the art field, my approach to making an exhibition about fashion and fashion-related practices is more focused on concepts than on the visual setting, scenography and storytelling.
So, in the case of exhibitions I did, I would usually reduce to the minimum props and various visual elements which can construct narration, mostly because I’m not very much into showing clothes and talking about their sartorial, ethnological or anthropological aspects.
When I did “Wonderingmode” at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, I was driven by certain ontological questions, such as: what is fashion and how it can be shown beyond clothes and addressed as a cultural phenomenon.
Now, with “Transfashional” all this is pushed even further, since participants are working in the liminal field between fashion and other disciplines. Formally, works that have been presented or even realised especially for this project are more concepts, proposals, reflections, experimentations with material and conceptual aspects of fashion. This line was also traced by my initial intention to present exhibitions within the frame of contemporary art institutions.
In this project, fashion was presented as art, so to speak.
On the other hand, what we have observed since the 1990s is a gradual shift from what were once called “costume museums” to what is now referred to as “fashion museums.”
When costume museums like those at the V&A or the Metropolitan opened in the late 1800s, their initial collections consisted of items regarded as historical documents, reflecting ethnological, anthropological, sociological, and cultural changes that societies had undergone over centuries. However, since the late 1990s, there has been a noticeable change: some costume museums have been renamed as fashion museums, with a focus on contemporary fashion and active designers taking centre stage.
After blockbuster exhibitions dedicated to Alexander McQueen at the MET and V&A, showcasing fashion in visually compelling settings, this approach has become essential. Such curatorial strategies are suitable for retrospectives on the creative journeys of celebrated designers and are aimed at broad audiences.
Currently, my interest lies in exploring intriguing, innovative, and critical practices that lie within or outside the fashion system.
My approach to presenting these fashion and art works reflects their intrinsic “nature,” avoiding elaborate scenography and visual effects.
AAG: What would you advise two novices in the world of probation officers?
DD: If you are up to setting an exhibition with some fashion items, look first to how other fashion curators addressed these issues in the recent past. Fashion curating is a young and emerging sub-section of curatorial studies, so there are not so many study books to consult.
There are, as far as I know, two readers entitled “Fashion Curating” and in the catalogue of “Wonderingmode” I published my interviews with some of the pioneers and authorities in this field, such as Judith Clark, Maria Luisa Frisa, Valerie Steele and some others.
It is also good to look at Oliver Saillard and his approach to curating, since he merged exhibition and performance in a very interesting way.
But apart from literature, what's most exciting is working directly with designers/artists, listening and learning from them, since an exhibition is always a transposition of artistic concepts into visual and spatial forms.
More on fashion curating: “Fashion Curating - Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond”, Editor(s): Annamari Vänskä, Hazel Clark and “Fashion Curating—La Mode Exposée: Understanding Fashion Through the Exhibition” edited by Luca Marchetti
INSTAGRAM
@EXPERIMENTS.FASHION.ART