12th - 16th of May 2015
17th annual conference of IFFTI - International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes
“MOMENTING THE MEMENTO”
Polimoda, Florence 

At the end of Linda Loppa's tenure as director, Polimoda organised an international conference that, according to Linda’s vision, became a vibrant and multifaceted event: an academic conference, a set of exhibitive and performative events, a moment of collective brainstorming and generally, a statement about how fashion education can be rethought and redesigned. 

I collaborated with Linda on the talk sessions “In Conversation With” that took place in the Odeon Cinema, as well as on other curatorial aspects, which led to the realisation of the entire event. 

It all began much earlier. In 2012, there was a gathering called “SALON” organised by Linda, which I attended alongside Barbara Vinken, Filep Motwary, Stefan Siegel, Danilo Venturi, Alberto Salvadori, and several other panellists. 
Then, between 2014 and 2015, we began to meet more often with Linda, to envision how an academic conference could become a way to re-evoke the Florentine Fashion Biennial organised by Germano Celant, Ingrid Sischy, Franca Sozzani, and Luigi Settembrini in 1996/97. The twentieth anniversary of that great event, a real milestone for the history of fashion curating, would be a year later, in 2016, and we were totally aware of that. 
Danilo Venturi wrote an essay titled “Momenting the Memento”, which provided a conceptual spark and also served as the title for the entire event.
Linda formed a small group, inviting Francesca Tacconi from Pitti Immagine, Alberto Salvadori from Marino Marini Museum, me and a few more collaborators, to form a jury and go through the applications. We were gathering in a small room behind Linda’s office, which gradually became our “dream” place. Walls were covered by images, prints from the portfolios, various other visual references and keywords that were pivotal to the curatorial and conceptual frame that Linda had in mind. 

This collaboration with Linda inspired a concept for a research and workshop-driven didactic methodology that I termed “transfashional”. We did not manage to develop it within Polimoda, but one year later, I initiated a project with the same title, which led me to explore deeper fashion-related art forms that I had always found inspiring and captivating.

2015

IFFTI CONFERENCE “MOMENTING THE MEMENTO”

On behalf of Polimoda, it is a great pleasure and honour to greet all guests and participants of the 17th IFFTI conference entitled “Momenting the Memento”. 

I come from an art background. I work as a curator, and lately as artistic director of a contemporary art museum. But even if I consider art, visual art, the principal domain of my interest and work, I never thought of this domain as something closed and confined. On the contrary, I always viewed it as an expanded field of reflection and creativity, which can be expressed through the multiplicity of languages and media. At the intersection between different disciplines and different domains of knowledge, we can find glimpses of the new, of what yet has to be denominated and defined. For me, the most stimulating moment is when I feel uncertain, when I find myself asking: is this art? Is this fashion? Is this architecture? Or is it an encounter between them?
That’s exactly the reason why I feel at home here, within this event curated by Linda Loppa, organised and promoted by Polimoda. I can say I feel at home because of all those works that we can see in different exhibition sites that this magnificent city offered; or even more, because I have this opportunity, moreover a privilege, to share the floor with such an extraordinary mixture of creative thinkers who, in visionary and irreverent way, seek to push not only boundaries between different disciplines, but boundaries of our thinking and comprehending the present… to inspire us to imagine the future. 
For this reason, even as a newcomer, I accepted without hesitation to join this program, since I see it as a possibility to dive into a stream of thoughts, ideas, reflections, experiences that will help me learn, understand and finally envision possible answers to all those questions that inevitably arises when you step out of your comfort zone. In my case, those quests are mostly related to the issues such as: - How can we build platforms for cross-disciplinary research? Moreover, how can we build “temples” in which products and outcomes of cutting-edge research can be showcased and shared with wider audiences? How can we refine the language to articulate these new positions, and how can we expand the vocabulary to talk about these new forms of creativity and knowledge without falling into the semantic gaps and losing ourselves in the wideness of such generic and poly-meaning terms, such as ‘fashion’, for instance? 

When confronted with those practices which seek to build bridges between fashion and art, I would like to start using trans/fashion - a coined term whose prefix ‘trans’ stands for: transit, transformation and transcendence. 

Transcendence of the boundaries between disciplines. 
Transformation of the conventional notion of fashion. 
Transition, as a free flow of ideas, concepts, and productive processes, can lead us towards new paradigmatic models of creativity and living.

In Conversation With
BODY | SPACE | DRESS | IMAGRY | CALLIGRAPHY | CARFT

14th May - session I  
themes: BODY & CALLIGRAPHY 
Speakers:
Sissel Tolaas, professional ‘in-betweener’ and olfactory expert / SMELL Re_searchLab BERLIN
Clemens Thornquist, writer, researcher / Swedish School of Textiles
Gary Needham, writer, researcher / Nottingham Trent University
Tim Blanks, author and fashion commentator / Style.com
Danilo Venturi, author and fashion educator / Polimoda, Florence
Stefan Siegel, founder of NJAL 

Content of talks/discussions / preliminary questions:

• New ways for ‘knowing the world’ through the perceptive potential of the body
• Centrality of human figure - both as ‘formal’ and ethical value
• Cross-disciplinary research/science of fashion and fashion education/creation of new professional profiles and platforms for the development of their work 
• New instruments for new forms of knowledge: the question of language (terminology) / Lifting the conceptual level of fashion through writing 
• Creative potentials opened up by new technologies and the need for preserving (updating) traditional crafts and skills in relation to new forms of creativity
• Democratisation and humanisation of fashion systems through digital platforms and new paradigms of value

14th May - session II
themes: SPACE & DRESS 
Speakers:
Frances Corner, fashion educator and dean / London College of Fashion
Jan Debbaut, art curator / University of Ghent
Tony Bendall, artist, fashion curator and educator / Manchester Metropolitan University
Aki Choklat, fashion educator / trend-forecaster / Polimoda, Florence 
Ou Ning, artist and activist
Adele Varcoe, fashion practitioner / RMIT University

Content of talks/discussions / preliminary questions: 

• Dialectic between fashion and space/context within which it is shown
• Curating art / curating fashion - methodological similarities and differences  
• Cross-disciplinarity in the research and the need for new ethics, besides new aesthetics
• Social alternatives and counter-models - through the ‘return to rural’ or through possibilities of interconnecting through the internet/global networks

15th May - session III 
themes: CRAFT & IMAGERY 
Speakers:
PATRICK DE MUYNCK, fashion design educator / Polimoda, Florence
JANE RAPLEY, fashion educator /  Central Saint Martins, London 
DIANE PERNET, fashion blogger and founder of the platform for fashion films ASVOFF
Armando Chant, fashion designer and educator / University of Technology Sydney
Lisette Ros, critical performer / ArtEZ
Richard Lindqvist, fashion designer / Swedish School of Textiles

Content of talks/discussions / preliminary questions:

• New imperatives for education in relation to new platforms and new expressive tools for fashion design
• Differentiation of creative and expressive potential for a fashion designer (in film, performance, installation, etc.) 
• Ways in which young designers can or should use new digital platforms and how, through them, they can challenge the status quo of the fashion system?
• Paradigm shifts - visions for the future fashion system

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