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, myself, and a few more collaborators to serve as a jury and review the applications. We were gathering in a small room behind Linda’s office, which gradually became our “dream” place. Walls were covered with images, prints from portfolios, various visual references, and keywords BODY | SPACE | DRESS | IMAGERY | CALLIGRAPHY | CRAFT that were central to the curatorial and conceptual framework Linda envisioned.

Gary Needham
Gary Needham is a senior lecturer at the School of the Arts, University of Liverpool, UK. He was also a senior lecturer in the Department of English, Culture, and Media at Nottingham Trent University, where he taught film and visual culture. 
He has research interests in film, art, and visual culture that include fashion, sexuality, and subculture. He co-edited “Warhol in Ten Takes” for the British Film Institute, and he is the author of a book on the film “Brokeback Mountain” (E.U.P., 2010), as well as co-editor of “Queer TV: Histories, Theories, Politics” (Routledge, 2009) and “Asian Cinemas” (E.U.P., 2006). He is also the co-editor of two book series, “American Indies” and “Hollywood Centenary”.
He is an associate editor of the journal Film, Fashion, and Consumption (Intellect) and has recently published on the gimp in the journal Fashion Theory.

2015

GARY NEEDHAM: FETISH IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF THE WAY YOU CAN INCORPORATE THE THRILL OF TRANSGRESSION WITHOUT ACTUALLY PARTICIPATING IN TRANSGRESSION ITSELF

Dobrila Denegri: You are addressing the theme of Fetish through your performance/installation. It’s a term with an interesting history, meaning artificial/factitious, but it also stood for sorcery, magic, charm, prettiness and elegance… What does Fetish mean, how do you approach it, and how do you address it in your work? 

Gary Needham: My first thought is always the Freudian concept of the fetish based on the tension between avowal and disavowal, which, if we think about the fetish in relation to fashion, we could say that there is similar tension at play. The tension between knowing it really has something to do with sex, especially sadomasochistic sex, but at the same time ignoring such a fact in order to let it transcend into something that 'looks' transgressive rather than, in practice at least, actually is transgressive. 
Robert Mapplethorpe talked about his S&M photographs as “playing with the edge”, and the flirtation with the fetish in fashion is really a play between the edge that separates the safe/unsafe, real/fantasy, normal/perverse, and fear/desire. The performance in Florence is based on exploring and making sense of those edges and tensions in both a critical and playful way. 

DD: How do you see the relationship between fetish/bondage and fashion? 

GN: It is an odd mixture of curiosity and fear, and we often see elements of fetish and bondage in various designers, stylists, and photographers, both subtle and ostentatious, but rarely a 'full look'. The fetish and fashion relation has a long history of invention and appropriation. Elements and motifs are frequently incorporated with just enough of a thrill, a gesture, to make it tasteful, but not enough to feel you're now ready for the dungeon. 
Fashion has a great way of recontextualising, and the fetish is a good example of the way you can incorporate the thrill of transgression without actually participating in transgression itself. You may look like a dominatrix in your higher-than-high Louboutin stilettos or a slave in your Rick Owens, but you're not actually either of those.

DD: The bondage mask, which is one of the focal elements of your work, might have broader allusions. Covering the face, hiding the identity, has become something which is quite exploited in recent fashion trends. It might be seen as a transposition of a notion of ‘uncertain’ identity, as well as an attempt to slip away from the over-present surveillance systems that we are all subjected to. What does facelessness mean to you? 

GN: Yes, the particular fetish object that fascinates is the gimp mask because it refuses to give you access to the person's identity, it is a denial of identification which is why we might have shifted in now seeing the mask's associations as one of terrorism these days, the faceless horror of today’s media, rather sadomasochism like the gimp scene from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction”. 
It is no coincidence that we also see these 'gimp masks' in horror movies because we understand that the imagery is like a sort of 'sexual terror', it has a psychoanalytic dimension, although gimp masks or leather goods have tended to be masochistic, effectuating, and used more for sensory deprivation.  The audience is going to be robbed of seeing the real me because I'll be behind such a mask. They'll be curious, of course, but hopefully a little bit afraid too because it is a fantasy but also a nightmare - there's another edge – it really does tap into something unconscious! 

DD: What should we, as a collective, aspire to? 

GN: Challenge: as a collective, we should expand the meaning of 'fashion' in ways that tap into the big questions about human existence; fashion tells us a lot about who we are and ignoring that fact is avoiding dealing with life, culture, politics, and contemporary existence. 
Fashion is inseparable from our identity, which is partly shaped by what we wear, or even desire or refuse to wear, but it is also inseparable from economics and power, which is why I am exploring the leather mask; it is about a garment and the questions of identity and power it invokes. Too often, fashion as a concept is seen (by those outside it) as superficial, frivolous, consumption-led, impermanent. We have to challenge that perception in unexpected ways and find a better way to achieve results, which means continuing to challenge ourselves first. 

DD: Towards what should fashion creatives aspire to? 

GN: Risk: Taking risks, playing with the edge as Mapplethorpe suggests. In going beyond our sense of what is safe, what our limits are, we might see what is on the other side. This is the first time I'll be turning research into a performance, and for me, this is a risk as it takes me out of the comfort of conventional academia, and who knows where it might lead. 

DD: What should the individual aspire to?

GN: Individuals should aspire to be what makes them individual. Homogeneity is the enemy of creativity. Just look at the high street of most European cities. No wonder popular culture is obsessed with zombies these days. It is the ultimate metaphor for the dead mass of homogeneity that exists within mainstream consumer culture; the film “Dawn of the Dead” (1978) is set in a shopping mall for good reason. They all want the same thing. Individuality is about wanting something better, and taking fashion as seriously as we do is also about wanting something better.

Published at the Polimoda website during the IFFTI Conference

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