Re-Visioning Fashion Theories: Postcolonial and Critical Transcultural Perspectives

Modeforschung und Modetheorien sind bis heute sehr stark von einer euro-amerikanischen Perspektive geprägt, von wo aus historische und aktuelle Entwicklungen im Zuge der Globalisierung immer noch sehr einseitig beschrieben und bewertet werden. Als Marker für Zivilisation repräsentiert der Begriff der Mode ein westliches Paradigma, verkörpert koloniale Hegemonien und Prozesse des Otherings. Mode avancierte im Prozess der Moderne zu einer Politik der Erscheinung, die Machtstrukturen und Raumordnungen im Sinne einer Cultural Performance globaler und lokaler Beziehungen zum Ausdruck bringt. Während eine kritische Revision von Modetheorien und ihrer zentralen Begriffe aus postkolonialer Perspektive bis heute jedoch noch aussteht, perspektivierten die Cultural Studies bereits in den 1970er Jahren den Begriff des Style als Geschichte einer historischen Abfolge von Migrationsrouten und als “phantom history of race relations“ (Hebdige).

An dieser Stelle setzt die internationale Tagung Re-Visioning Fashion Theories – Postcolonial and Critical Transcultural Perspectives an. Sie stellt Mode und Modetheorien als westliche Theoreme zur Debatte. Ziel der Tagung ist es die Perspektiven postkolonialer globalisierungskritische Forschungen auf den Bereich der Mode hin zu reflektieren und im Hinblick auf die aktuelle Situation von Flucht- und Migrationsbewegungen hin zu überdenken.

• Sie diskutiert Mode und Modetheorien im Hinblick auf aktuelle postkoloniale Forschungsperspektiven.
• Sie analysiert Theorien und methodische Ansätze der Mode als Strategien eines weißen, europäischen und patriarchalen Blickregimes.
• Sie beleuchtet Mode, Kleidung und Textilien im Hinblick auf aktuelle Flucht- und Migrationsprozesse und damit verbundenen diasporische und hybride Theoriebildungen.
• Sie verschränkt postkoloniale Perspektiven mit globalisierungskritischen ökonomischen Fragestellungen um neo-kolonisierende Effekte der globalen Modeindustrie zu untersuchen genauso wie Alternativen zu diesen zu formulieren.

Anmedung unter revisioningfashion@gmail.com

Friday, 11th December 2015

Location: Academy of Fine Arts, Karl-Schweighofer-Gasse 3, Room 306, 1070 Vienna

Saturday, 12th December 2015

Locations:
10:00 / Academy of Fine Arts, Karl-Schweighofer-Gasse 3, Room 206, 1070 Vienna
14:00 / University of Applied Arts Vienna, Angewandte Innovation Laboratory (AIL), Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, 1010 Vienna

CV der internationalen Vortragenden (in alphabetischer Reihenfolge)

Patrik Aspers, Prof. PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Uppsala University. His research focuses on theory development, and especially of markets. His work is grounded in phenomenology. Empirically Aspers has studied the economy, especially the fashion industry. He has published several books, including Markets in Fashion, A Phenomenological Approach (Routledge 2006), Orderly Fashion, A Sociology of Markets (Princeton UP, 2010), Markets (Polity Press 2011), co-edited with Jens Beckert, The Worth of Goods (Oxford University Press 2011), and Re-Imagining Economic Sociology (Forthcoming 2015), which is co-edited with Nigel Dodd.

Dr. Christine Checinska studied Fashion/Textile Design at the University of the West of England, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1986 and Fashion and Communication at the University for the Creative Arts, earning an MA in 2002. Her PhD, Colonizin’ in Reverse: the Creolised Aesthetic of the Windrush Generation , was awarded by Goldsmiths College, (Centre for Cultural Studies), University of London, in 2009. During 2013 - 2015 she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at UEL, (University of East London). Between 2014-2015 she was the Second Stuart Hall Library Animateur at Iniva, London.  Currently she is an Associate Researcher at VIAD, University of Johannesburg and an Associate Lecturer in MA Fashion at Goldsmiths, London. Her Publications include: An Aesthetic of Blackness? Cloth, Culture and the African Diasporas - Commission to edit a special issue of Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, Bloomsbury Publications – work in progress; Spinning a Yarn of One’s Own in A Companion to Textile Cultures, edited by Jennifer Harris, Wiley- Blackwell Publications, 2016; Social Fabric co-authored with Grant Watson (Iniva) in The Handbook of Textile Culture, edited by Janis Jefferies, Hazel Clark and Diana Wood Conroy, Bloomsbury Publications, 2015; Crafting Difference: Art, Cloth and the African Diasporas in Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today, edited by Jessica Hemmings, Bloomsbury Publications.

Kemi Bassene was born in Dakar and lives in Paris. He is photographer since he was seven, writer and musicologist. His works combines fragments of African cultures as intersections out of Africa. His approach is to translate historical orality on photography and music by a new reading of romanticism and modern Art in the postcolonial era. He is a founder member of Clark House Initiative (Bombay) and founder member of Afrikadaa. He did exhibitions in Bombay, Delhi, Munich, Minneapolis, Poland, Paris and Gwangju. Among others he published an essay for Asian Loop Gallery (South Korea) in 2015: A more Asian Indian imaginary.

Christine Delhaye MW Dr. is lecturer in Cultural Theory and Policy in the Cultural Studies program, Department of Arts, Religion and Culture. She teaches courses on Art and Culture in the Public Domain and Founders of Cultural Studies. Since 2012 she has been teaching on fashion history and theory. She is program chair of the MA Kunst en cultuur in het publieke domein. Her fields of research include Cultural Globalization and Urban Cultures, Fashion studies. Among others she has published: C. Delhaye & R. Woets. The Commodification of Ethnicity: Vlisco Fabrics and Wax Cloth Fashion in Ghana. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 2 (1), 77-97; C. Delhaye, S. Saharso & V. van de Ven (2014). Immigrant Youths’ Contribution to Urban Culture in Amsterdam. In N. Foner, J. Rath, J.W. Duyvendak & R. van Reekum (Eds.), New York and Amsterdam: immigration and the new urban landscape (pp. 287-309). New York: New York University Press; Christine Delhaye , Door consumptie tot individu. Modebladen in Nederland, 1880-1914. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008.

Burcu Dogramaci, Prof. Dr. was born in Ankara 1971. Since 2009 she is working as a professor for Art History at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Her research focuses Art, Exile and Migration, Photography and Photo Books, Fashion, Film Costumes as well as Architectural and Urban Studies. Her recent publications include: Heimat. Eine künstlerische Spurensuche, Köln: Böhlau 2015 (upcoming); Migration und künstlerische Produktion. Aktuelle Perspektiven, Bielefeld: transcript 2013 (ed.);  Wechselbeziehungen. Mode, Malerei und Fotografie im 19. Jahrhundert, Marburg: Jonas 2011. She is Co-Spokeswoman of the Research Group “Art Production and Art Theory in the Age of Global Migration” („Kunstproduktion und Kunsttheorie im Zeichen globaler Migration“) des Ulmer Vereins für Kunst und Kulturwissenschaften established in 2013 and Co-Editor of the yearbook for Exile Research as well as of the publication series „Mode global“ for Böhlau Publishers.

Sonja Eismann was born in 1973 in Heidelberg, Germany. She lives in Berlin where she works as a journalist and cultural scientists. Sonja Eismann studied in Vienna, Mannheim, Dijon (France) and Santa Cruz (USA). In 1999 she co-founded the magazine „nylon. KunstStoff zu Feminismus und Populärkultur“ and co-moderated a biweekly radio-show covering pop-culture and feminism at orange 94.0 (Vienna). In addition she worked as a freelancer for the Austrian youth radio station FM4. From 2002 to 2007 she was editor at the music magazine Intro in Köln, from 2007 to 2008 she contributed to the research project „Grrrl Zines“ under the guidance of Dr. Elke Zobl in Salzburg. Beginning of 2008 she co-founded Missy Magazine. In 2007 Sonja Eismann published her anthology „Hot Topic. Popfeminismus heute“, in 2011 she was co-editor of „Craftista. Handarbeit als Aktivismus“ and in 2012 she finished „absolute fashion“ for the publishing house orange press. Starting with 2007 teaching activities at the Universities of Basel, Salzburg und Paderborn and the Universities of Arts in Vienna, Linz and Zürich. Freelance author for Spex, taz, Jungle World, konkret etc. Publications, workshops and lectures focusing on: representation of gender in popular culture, Third-Wave-Feminism, gender-sensitives (pop)journalistic writing, Do-It-Yourself-Culture and theory of fashion.

Gabriele Genge , Prof. Dr, is Professor and Chairholder of Art History and Theory at the University Duisburg-Essen (Germany). Her researches focus on visual culture from 18th to 21st centuries, on art and ethnography, modernism and postcolonialism.

Alexandra Karentzos , PhD, is Professor of Fashion and Aesthetics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany. She was previously Junior Professor of Art History at the University of Trier and Assistant Curator at the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum of Contemporary Art (both in Berlin). In 2007 she was fellow at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA (Research group No Laughing Matter. Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity ), and in 2011 she was fellow at the Alfred Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald. She is co-founder and member of the board of the Centre for Postcolonial and Gender Studies (CePoG) Trier, and co-founder and editor of a magazine for contemporary art and popular culture Querformat .  Her research interests span the field of art, visual culture and fashion from the nineteenth century through to the present day, with special focus on transculturality and globalization and issues revolving around the methodological reflection on these phenomena.  Selected publications: “ Weben und Verweben. Zur Ästhetik der Migration in Angela Melitopoulos’ Video ‘Passing DRAMA’” , in: IMIS -Beiträge 46/2015, ed. by Melanie Ulz (in press); Dress up! Transcultural Fashion , thematic issue of the journal Querformat. Zeitgenössisches, Kunst, Populärkultur , 6/2013 (co-editors Birgit Haehnel, Nina Trauth, Jörg Petri); Schlüsselwerke der Postcolonial Studies . Wiesbaden 2012 (co-editors Julia Reuter); Topologies of Travel. Tourism – Imagination – Migration , online-publication Trier University 2010 (co-editors Alma-Elisa Kittner, Julia Reuter); Fremde Männer – Other Men , thematic issue of the journal kritische berichte , 4/2007 (co-editor Sabine Kampmann); Der Orient, die Fremde. Positionen zeitgenössischer Kunst und Literatur , Bielefeld: transcript 2006 (co-editor Regina Göckede); Kunstgöttinnen. Mythische Weiblichkeit zwischen Historismus und Secessionen , Marburg: Jonas 2005.

Gabriele Mentges , Prof. Dr., is Professor for Cultural Anthropology of Textiles at the Technical University Dortmund and has worked as a curator at the Württemberg State Museum for Popular Culture. She studied Ethnology and European ethnology, Philosophy, and Sociology at the Universities of Heidelberg, Hamburg, and Marburg, and has been a researcher at the Musée de l’Homme (Paris) and research assistant at the Seminar für European Ethnology Kiel. Her research and publication focuses on material cultures, European and Non-Western Fashion History, Fashion and Cultural Theories, Museum Studies. She has lead several international research projects, among which the most recent “Modernity of Traditions. On the Sustainablity of the Uzbek textile heritage (2013-2015), is carried out in collaboration with many Uzbek Universities and research centers.

Birgit Mersmann is Visiting Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art/Aesthetic Theory at the University of Cologne and associated research professor at the NCCR Eikones at the University of Basel. From 2008 to 2015, she held a professorship of Non-Western and European Art at the international Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. Together with Burcu Dogramaci, she is the co-founder of the research group on “Art Production and Art Theory in the Age of Global Migration” established in 2013. In 2014 she was Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium of Culture and Society at the University of Chicago, and in 2013 Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University (ANU), where she analysed the architectonic and curatorial formation of new urban museumscapes in Asian global cities from the perspective of museums of contemporary art. As senior researcher of the National Competence Centre of Research “Iconic Criticism. The Power and Meaning of Images” at the University of Basel, Switzerland (2005-2008), she investigated “iconoscriptures” as hybrid symbolic forms and inter-media expressions between image and writing. From 1998 to 2002 she taught as DAAD Visiting Professor at the Seoul National University in South Korea. Research foci include image and media theory, visual cultures, contemporary East Asian and Western art, global art history, the history of Asian biennials, visual translation, interrelations between script and image. Her recent monographs and edited books include The Humanities between Global Integration and Cultural Diversity (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter, 2016); Schriftikonik. Bildphänomene der Schrift in kultur- und medienkomparativer Perspektive (München: Fink, 2015); Kunsttopographien globaler Migration , thematic issue of the journal kritische berichte (Marburg: Jonas, 2015); Schrift Macht Bild. Schriftkulturen in bildkritischer Perspektive (Weilerswist: Velbrück, 2011); Transmission Image. Visual Translation and Cultural Agency (Newcastle: CSP, 2009).

Minh-Ha T. Pham, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Before arriving to Pratt, she was an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies and Asian American Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her research focuses on the structural forces of race, gender, and class shaping contemporary fashion media technologies, logics, conditions, and practices. She's taken up these themes in studies of personal style blogs, virtual fitting rooms, holographic fashion models, fashion design, the digital fashion archive, and in her most recent work, fashion copyright talk and copynorms. Minh-Ha received a BA in English at University of California, Santa Barbara (1995) and earned a PhD in Comparative Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Visual Studies at University of California, Berkeley (2007). She is the author of the forthcoming book Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging (Duke UP 2015) as well as numerous essays published in a wide range of academic journals and mainstream media. Her research has been featured in, among other sites, The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and Huffington Post.

Zoe Romano holds a degree in Philosophy from Università Statale, Milano and a Master in Media Science and Technology at University of Pavia. She co-conducted the European Research project Openwear.org (EDUFashion, funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme LLP) on collaborative fashion and open source branding in collaboration with Poper - a social communication studio based in Ljubljana -, Ethical Economy, a company based in London providing web tools to build ethically significant relations, and 3 european universities from Italy (University of Milan, Faculty of Political Science), Slovenia (Faculty of Natural Sciences in Ljubljana) and Denmark (Copenhagen Business School). She was involved into media activism and political visual art for 10 years, working on precarity, social production, material and immaterial labor in creative and service industries. She currently works on Digital Strategy & Wearables at Arduino and recently joined the board of Make in Italy Foundation CDB. She lives in Milano and in 2014 launched a Fablab in Milan called WeMake, focused on agile fashion and fabrication-based design practices.

Dr. Angela Stercken is art historian, curator, and writer focusing on art from the 19th to 21st centuries, exploring subjects such as the theory of image, the history of exhibition and the museum, the theory of art, space and technology, contemporary conceptual and digital art and transcultural processes.