070221 SEVENTEEN SECONDS - dagensdatum_mail_070519.pdf · [KAJSA G ERIKSSON, 50% SEMINAR] (This...

070221SEVENTEEN SECONDS

[KAJSA G ERIKSSON, 50% SEMINAR]

Kajsa G Eriksson is a doctoral degree candidate in design, with a concentration in fashion design. She is enrolled in the doctoral program at HDK, School of Design and Crafts, Gothenburg University and a teacher in fashion design at The Swedish School of Textiles at University of Borås.

e-mail: [email protected]

Title of PhD-project: IN PASSING – Street, Fashionand the Creation of Meaning in Public Space

Main supervisor: Peter Ullmark, professor in design at [email protected]

(This material is a draft for a PhD seminar and should not be quoted or referred to without permission)

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070221SEVENTEEN SECONDS [KAJSA G ERIKSSON, 50% SEMINAR](This material is a draft for a PhD seminar and should not be quoted or referred to without permission)

CONTENTS:

SEVENTEEN SECONDS

01 A REFLECTION[Introduction] [Practice and theory] [50% seminar]

02 PLAY FOR TODAY[Life &Art] [The Creation of a Trap][Ephemera]

03 SECRETS [Passing in Venice 050804 - ]

04 IN YOUR HOUSE[The relation between fashion and fine art] [Links]

05 THREE[Mourning the Moment]

06 THE FINAL SOUND[Lies]

07 A FOREST[Partly Blind]

08 M[Fashion Moments]

09 AT NIGHT[Work Process] [Drawings]

10 SEVENTEEN SECONDS[Image references] [Bibliography]

Project description: This doctoral project is dedicated to the fleeting meeting in the street, and fashion as non-verbal communication in urban space. It is situated in between the realms of fine art and fashion design, deriving its methods from both areas. The aim is to work with fashion as identity, play and reciprocity between individuals and with the environment. In these momentary meetings, magic and the everyday are two sides intertwining in a flash of a moment. This is an artistic R&D project, aiming to create, construct and inspire.

Doctoral degreecandidate infashion designKajsa G Eriksson

Main supervisorPeter Ullmark

OponentElin Wikström

Graphical DesignMattias Idunger

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01 REFLECTION[INTRODUCTION]

It is a windy autumn day in Göteborg. I have sewn two black and white tartan checked suits. (trousers, vest and jacket), and combined them with a white shirt and black shoes. We, a male friend who happens to have a similar haircut and I, are dressed in the checked suits and are standing at either end of Vasagatan, a beautiful alley through the city centre. We begin to walk at a specific time, and when we both approach the park midway on the street, I can see a double of myself approaching. The brown leaves are swirling in the wind. It is uncanny to meet ones double. When we meet, we give a short glance, as to check out a stranger, not too long or too short, just exactly the way we had practised, and then we pass. The moment is gone.

It is a day that I will remember; it lives inside me as a memory of a certain quality. I did not ask anyone to take a picture of it, I asked someone to follow, watching us, an observer. When we meet afterwards she tells her story of what had happened. When we passed each other, she had been standing on the pavement at a tram stop together with some other people. She noticed that when we passed in front of them people stopped talking for a moment and watched silently while the moment passed and then things were back to normal again.

I consider this performance, done several years ago, as an indicator of why I do what I do, especially in rela-tion to an audience. I do not necessary need to know their reactions or thoughts. Although, I may need to know that there is some reaction or a change in some way even for a short while. I like to think that a person came home and told someone a story about what happened, and maybe also gave an explanation of their own why it happened in the first place.

In fashion there are narratives spread among people to make meaning of the most abstract and varying kind of fashion and dress. The story most commonly known is of the stock market and the hemline of the skirt following each other. The idea that what we wear tells us something about our time is widespread. In The Times there is a column called “On the Street”, in which Bill Cunningham has made a picture essay since 1989. We somehow accept on one level that how we dress reflects, in some way, what we are thinking about ourselves. If this is true or not is of no interest in this investigation. I find the fascination and the questions about the meaning of fashion intriguing, and how

this astonishment can lead to stories or even just embryos of fantasies and possible narratives.

In the case of this doctoral project, there is no intention to deal with the meaning of clothes and fashion, in the sense of it having any particular representation.Fashion is seen as a nonverbal communication system that has language-like qualities, and with meanings that are in constant change, due to the interaction between people. This system reflects Julia Kristeva’s ideas about the “semiotic” in contrast to the “symbolic”. In the symbolic, there is a clear demarcation between the subject and the object, where as in the semiotic the closed boundaries between the subject and the object are under scrutiny. “This poetic language is dependent on rhythm rather than logic” and is a perspective on fashion favoured by Warwick and Cavallaro1. Elizabeth Wilson describes this as an alternative explanation of fashion in her book “Adorned in Dreams”2. The value lies in the potential, the forecast and the inspiration. The experiments with the creation of the clothes, and the placement of them in situations, are done to construct a potential for possible meanings and uses. The symbolic meaning or interpretations of the clothes are not the main function of the work, but to put the design in action. The possibility of narratives emerging is the guideline in the design of the clothes and the situations.

In my work, I tend to keep away from being judge-mental, and instead adopt a forgiving approach towards myself and others. In creating performances, it is necessary to work with rules and instructions. The design of these rules and instructions are important, and are used as part of the experiments themselves, in order to see what is and what is not working. The Individual ethics of the artist and the participants play out in the work itself. The work is not taking a moral or ethical position.

I will be using the perspective of performativity and role plays in fashion, fine art, public space and research. (Goffman)3 I will be further investigating and examining the performative qualities in gestures, clothes and identity. Judith Butler’s work should be of great help here.

The aim of the work is to create an inspirational knowledge, in order to broaden the meanings and latent uses of fashion design. The experiments conducted in the research are done in order to develop new connections

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between, clothing, fashion, public space, narrative and potential narrative. The results of this project come in the form of examples.

The definition of fashion here is of a two kinds. One, where fashion is considered cultural phenomena based on change and on the fact that people adorns their bodies with dreams (Wilson)4 …and lies (Back)5.

Secondly, as something very specific to this project and which I have attempted to capture in the text about fashion moments6, when fashion takes on a momentary characteristic, and is part of an active of transformation to other worlds.

[PRACTICE AND THEORY]

On a journey to India around Christmas 2005, a di-minutive incident reminded me of the relationship between theory and practice.

As much as I want to feel that there is no problem in doing research as a practitioner, and attending courses in design theory, I do feel that there is a discrepancy between practice and theory. Maybe this dualism is just based on cultural habit, but I do have a nagging feeling that there will always be a leap in between the two.

I was visiting the botanical garden in Calcutta; the flora was truly amazing even if it was the dry period. They have the biggest Banyan-tree7 in the world, which was more like a space age installation than anything else.

Upon reflection later, I realised that the whole botani-cal garden was not used by visitors as examples of botanical research, yet it is built and created on this foundation of knowledge.

Visitors to the garden were more likely to fantasize around what was seen and the seduction of the place. The experience was a joyride with surprise and astonishment along the way. At the same time, I did learn much about the botanical life of India. Not in the way I would have by read-ing about it, but in a much more tactile fashion.

The installation of the garden was great; it provoked me to reflect upon it. Facts added from signs were acknowl-edged, but most significant, were the discussions amongst our group of four. This experience has become an inspira-tion, supporting the continuous belief that it is possible to do research as an artist/designer.

In a baroque theatre in Stockholm8, the audience is enchanted by the sound of rain being made by a machine

made from wood and stones; it creates an illusion of rain, not an exact copy. The discrepancy between the illusion and reality seem to trigger the audience’s fascination and astonishment. Through this demonstration (articulation) the sound of rain is understood, and not merely explained. This understanding, that has to incorporate some kind of em-pathy, gives the audience a feeling of high spirit (Asplund)9. The engagement and the sharing of fascination, (not simply the researchers /designers/artists own fascination and astonishment) is of importance in creating an understanding between artist and viewer.

Molander writes: The act does not have room for insecu-rities, or it would not be knowledge.10

This reminds me of a something an artist friend once said, in screen-printing you can not hesitate when pulling the scraper in the frame, it will always create a bad print. The same applies to performance, if you have decided to act, the action has to be carried out with security and no hesitation. What is done is done, even in a research project.

It is part of my process to date everything that is done in my practice. It is a way of naming my pieces, and also works as a signature.

Working with this flow of events and actions is a basis for my theory. This simple act gives me a sense of being right in the middle of my practice, at all times, and also provides a sense of stability when dealing with theories, when the flow of time in my own life seems to be exchanged for time as an abstract term. The dating keeps me based in the flow of everyday life, which is an important aspect of my project.

Molander cites the Swedish poet Göran Sonnevi with the words:

“There are many theories but only one practice.” He also talks about the voltage (potential)-field that

is found in-between practice and theory. In practice, ac-tions are irreversible. In theory, it is as if there is always a smorgasbord to choose from. We have the raw matter of practice and the spirited heights of theory. Have we again returned to an unsolvable dualism?

Returning to Molander’s11 ideas of the thrills and ex-citement created from the difference between practice and theory, this voltage-field filled with high potential excites me and inspires me to continue working. Perhaps these poles can be embraced as a source of energy and used for action, instead of causing cramps of confusion, or the passivity

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of “anything goes”, “all is relative” where duality ceases to exist. Acknowledging the difference between practice and theory, without fear of the tension created between the two, I will use the voltage-field as a field for potential activ-ity and embrace the tension as a source of energy.

[50% SEMINAR]

In preparation for the 50% seminar, I have worked intentionally in a rather fragmented fashion. I have been working on different parts at different times, and have employed a very non-linear way of putting these parts to-gether; a method connected to the process of collages and assemblages.

I wanted to challenge my own presumptions about art and science, with the form of the presentation, and there-fore chose to use the structure of a music album to create the framework for the material presented.

The album Seventeen Seconds by The Cure12 was selected to organise the material. The goal was to depart from dealing with my thoughts and material in a way that would fit it into a pre-ordered scientific theoretical model. The alternative method of using a framework outside the scientific world works to deepen my own reflections. The choice of this particular album came from the melancholic attitude that I wish to convey in my own material, and as a reflection of the definition of fashion as a poetic discourse. I have used of music as a “stabilizer”, as well as a tool for focusing my mind and thoughts while writing.

The intention has been to give the texts and the im-ages a similar value in the presentation. It is important that the images not to become illustrations to the texts; therefore I have made a conscious decision not to combine the two, whenever possible.

In the section 03 SECRETS [Passing in Venice] my intention has been to apply an ongoing meta-discourse. An analysis not carried out in the form of text, but a place where I can use my own medium as a tool for thinking. In the work of Passing in Venice I have taken into consideration the problems of engaging in research as a practitioner. I plan to continue this conversational work and to include more collaborators. I regard this method as having a core value in doing the research. Primarily as an example of conducting research in my practice, rather that conducting research about it.

I have wanted to avoid, as far as possible, any disem-bodied and purely abstract analysis. For the decisions made I am inspired by phenomenology and the epistemological thoughts by Francisco J. Varela13. Varela is someone who claims the embodied mind and a more balanced relationship between the subject and object. He prefers the complex-ity and considers meaning as “patterns which develop in the course of time”. He calls that “bringing forth of a world” and it is a less transparent model than the belief of representa-tion in the forms of symbols, and for me, a better working model.

Everything that works is true! This is the pragmatist’s view of the world, and gives way for many truths to be true. In the perspective of fashion design, with the aim of opening up of possibilities within fashion, that is a valid working concept.

(NOTES) 1 Warwick, Alexander and Cavallaro Dani, Fashioning the Frame:

Boundaries, Dress and the Body, Oxford: Berg, 19982 Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, IB

Taurus & Co Ltd, London, (1985) 2003. 3 Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life4 Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and

Modernity, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, London, (1985) 2003. 5 The fashion designer Ann-Sofie Back has in interviews repeat-

edly claimed that her interest in fashion lies in its ability to lie. She is interested in the fake as in materials that are trying to look more valuable than they really are.

6 08 M [Fashion Moments]7 The remarkable banyan tree of tropical Africa and the Indian

peninsula sends down from its branches great numbers of shoots, which take root and become new trunks. A single tree hus may spread over a large area. A specimen in the Calcutta botanical garden is more than 100 years old. It has a main trunk 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter, 230 trunks as large as oak trees, and more than 3,000 smaller ones.

8 Drottningholms teater.9 Asplund, Johan, Hur låter åskan, Bokförlaget Korpen, Göte-

borg, 2003. p. 5010 Molander, Bengt, Kunskap i Handling, Daidalos AB

1996. p. 1711 Molander, Bengt, Kunskap i Handling, Daidalos AB

1996. p. 1712 The Cure, Seventeen Seconds, Fiction Records Ltd, London,

(Albumreleased 1980), Re-issued 200513 Poerksen, Bernhard, The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues

Introducing Constructivism, Imprint Academic, Exeter, (2001) 2005 p. 86-95

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02 PLAY FOR TODAY[LIFE & ART]

To accompany a short interview, a magazine request-ed a photograph of me and arranged to send a photogra-pher. I decided to stage a situation for the documentation. I would purchase the exact same clothes as that of a manne-quin in a window of a store in Nordstan in Göteborg. Once dressed in the same outfit as the mannequin, and standing in front of it, the photographer from the magazine would then take the picture. (Imageref_01)

I had researched the area of Nordstan in Gothenburg in order to find a window display to work with. The large window at H&M was appropriate for the act. On the day the photo shoot was scheduled, I went down to Nordstan, along with an observer/assistant, and we situated ourselves at a coffee shop opposite the window. The photographer was to arrive later when the shops had closed.

As it happened, on that particular day the window was to be redecorated. That meant that I had to buy the clothes as they were dressing the doll in the window. Five minutes before closing time, two women decided to change the scarf around the dolls neck to another one. I had to run inside and beg them to exchange the scarf I had bought for the one currently around the mannequin’s neck. The pursuit of the outfit became an unplanned play within the act of shopping itself.

Prior to the photograph being taken, I posed in front of the window. I had some good contact with the people passing who seemed to understand what I was up to. I also had some comments and smiles in regard to the similarity between the mannequin and myself.

My work can be seen as falling into the tradition of performance art. The type of performances that interest me date from the seventies and the early eighties.

In the seventies autobiographical performance was used by artists such as Laurie Andersson, Hannah Wilke and Rebecca Horn (Imageref_03). I am specifically fascinated by Hannah Wilkes Super-t-art (Imageref_02).

At the end of the seventies and into the early eighties, the autobiographical performance carved the way for artists wanting to include their life style, dress and music into their art. The group General Idea, founded in Toronto in 1968, parodied the overly serious nature of the art world. 1 General Idea also founded the magazine File2 where they, in the form of both art and fashion magazine, “infected” fashion with subverted images and attitudes that would be

part of beginning of the punk era. General Idea’s strategy was to place art within culture, and they were inspiring to artists such as Cindy Sherman.

This autobiographical style made it possible to move in the direction they did, not drawing from other artists and theoretical debates about art, but from fashion and popular culture.

Even if the conceptually oriented performance style, that at this time was dominant, is put up in opposition to the more life style oriented performance works, it is of value to look a bit closer at the particular performance style fronted by the artist Allan Kaprow. Kaprow wrote the book “Essays on the blurring of Art and Life”3 ; in which his essays from 1958 to 1997 are collected.

This style of performance can be described as more didactic, intellectual and analytical. I see it in connection to social psychology, studies of social behaviour, and in combination with an interest in Zen, meditation and the conscious mind.

Kaprow continuously refers to the difference between game and play. For him, the distinction is fundamental. He sees play as the centre of experimentation.

“Gaming involves winning and loosing a desired goal. Playing is open-ended and, potentially, everybody “wins”. Playing has no stated purpose other than more playing. It is usually not serious in content or attitude, whereas gaming, which can also involve playing if it is subordinated to winning, is at heart competitive.”4

Kaprow is very idealistic in the way he looks at the differences. When you mix the social together with games and play, it becomes harder to tell the two apart. Kaprow does points out that the difference is based in the English language. I find the freedom of making up your own rules and instructions inspirational. One direction in the research is to concentrate on the rules and instructions of playing, rather than the scores and measures of gaming.

In my work, I state that in these momentary meetings, intersections of magic and the everyday, are two sides intertwining in a flash of a moment. Kaprow’s mixture of art and life can be used to improve my understanding in this area. In one of his essays, he writes about the participation performance, and how this genre could be developed. Kaprow writes further:

“Two steps were taken. One of them was to ritualize a mix of lifelike elements and fantasy, reject the staging area, and

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invite a number of people to take part, explaining the plan in a spirit of ceremony”5

He states that this mode of working eliminates the audience and makes use of the ritual. The ritual here is not seen as coming from a belief system, but as an invention coming from the artist. Some artists working in this tradition in the sixities were: Kenneth Dewey, Milan Knizak, Marta Minujoin, Wolf Vostell, and Kaprow himself.

In 1966 Kaprow discarded the model due to the lack of history of higher ceremony in the U.S., introducing instead, smaller pieces, like those by George Brecht, for example, that could easily be executed by one person. These pieices referred, in general, to intellectual games, treasure hunts, spiritual exercises, and the behaviour of street eccentrics, beggars and petitioners. John Cage’s interest in chance and the unique was a helpful model.

Some examples of these performances were: “changing one’s shirt in a park recreation area; walking through a city, crossing streets only with persons wearing red coats; listening for hours to a dripping faucet.”6

These performances are very much about the passing moment and the experience of it. What fails here, in relation to my work, is that these performances are so clear and “clean” in a way. The change is concentrated to the internal and to the mind. I find a similar approach in Situationist art. In the work I am doing, the external is of significance, and is integral to the experience. The specificity of the external is important to my work. The problem arises when the clothes are to become clothes and not clothing. I prefer to keep the idea of the clothing as something being worn, acted out, and not as a product. It is potentially problematic to approach the research, dealing with the philosophical and the material side of the work. I propose to deal with the tension in a forgiving way, and to use specific experience in guiding the work.

In Kaprow’s case, the problems that arose were that participants felt arbitrary, isolated, and tended to drift off, experiencing a feeling of absurdity from doing something without an audience. He thought that what may have been missing was a grounding in ordinary experience that could replace the absent stimulation of an audience, or cohesive crowd in a ceremony. Kaprow dove even deeper into the consciousness and the internal aspect, but also into the interrelated. He discovered how everyday activities could be regarded as performances in themselves. He refers to the writings of Erving Goffman from the early 50s, “The presentation of Self in Everyday Life”7, which is a

sociological study of conventional human relations. Kaprow thought that for art it was interesting that

everyday routines could be used as offstage performances. To be intentionally performing within everyday life, is bound to create some kind of curious awareness. The performer becomes simultaneously the agent and watcher, framing the transaction internally, by paying attention in motion. It is a method of closely experiencing a situation. This technique of intentionally performing everyday life could be an inspiration for the way one works with observers or participant performers. If we call a participant performer “a model”, walking through city dressed up, one could later make use of that subjective story and experienced activity, as a tale to add to the original narrative, rules and instructions of the performance. Could this be of use in the research, not as a measurement, but as an added element to the story of magic in the everyday?

[THE CREATION OF A TRAP]

In the spring of 1990, after two years of studying fashion design, I exhibit my final work at a fashion show at The Swedish School of Textile in Borås. In the autumn of the same year, I move to Göteborg to start my work as a Fashion Designer at the company Kapp-Ahl. The follow-ing spring, in my spare time, I secretly work on my first paintings, and after being accepted at KV Art School, I quit my job as a Fashion Designer, and engage all my time and energy into becoming an artist.

In the spring of 1990, I pick up the magazine DETAILS, finding images and a text about the fashion show in Paris, October 1989, by Martin Margiela.8 It is something out of the ordinary, it is described as a “unique event” both the clothes and the show. (Imageref_04-10).

It is set up in the outskirts of Paris in a largely black community, in the middle of a demolition site, with a crumbling concrete wall as a backdrop. The show, as the children of the neighbourhood get up on the catwalk and walk with the models, quickly becomes chaotic, but is still a fashion show. It is also here I first hear the clothes described by the words: “deconstructivist style” and the whole event is described with these following words

“The fashion troops perched on the crumbling walls that October evening were, in their own way, an eerie harbinger of jubilant Berliners dancing on the crumbling Wall in November. Margiela´s event now take on a historical aspect; it was a preview into an unknown world that we could not then have recognised or understood. True visionaries, without knowing

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the whys and wheres, create by reaching into their deepest passions, and on the rare occasions anticipate events before they happen.”9

The Wall falls in Berlin in November 1989 and changes forever the art scenes within Western art. There are a lot of things going on at this time that will have a great impact on the future, and they seem to be happening in sudden bursts at the turn from the eighties to the nineties.

“The Margiela view of Nineties fashion is an attempt by a new generation to overthrow the old regime of fossilized elegant taste.”10

Where I am today, and what I am attempting to aim for, is a direct result of the leap I made from being a fashion designer at Kapp-Ahl to a student at art school. I suspect that certain inputs, at this very crucial time, strongly shaped my way of thinking and how I consider and work with art and fashion.

In the autumn of 1991, I visit the exhibition Trans/Mission in Malmö at Rooseum.11 The exhibit features work by F Clemente, J Galán, G Gudmundsson, F Hajamadi, I Kabakov, A Kapoor, J Leirner, Y Morimura, J Munoz, C Samba, U Samuelson, with and essay by Dick Hebdige and an introduction by Lars Nittve. It is also a sign of a changing art-scene, Nittve writes:

“what is extraordinary is the fact that individual artists who have developed a language within a local, non dominant culture are allowed on the scene, and are valued there.”12

He continues:“Here is the outlet for the creativity contained in “new

and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs…hybridity, impurity, intermingling”, in Salman Rushdie´s words; a creativity that “rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melangé, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world” It is in Trans/Mission that the immigrant in the postcolonial inner cities of the West can say; “Now that, in the post modern age, you all feel so dispersed, I become centered. What I´ve thought of as dispersed and fragmented comes, paradoxically, to be the representative modern experience!”13

My own mental state, while entering the exhibition in Malmö, was wide open. After having entered the “heaven” of pre-art school, I saw no boundaries, only possibilities and excitement everywhere. So, upon encountering the work “The Mental institution or Institute of Creative Research”14 by Emilya & Ilya Kabakov, I could not believe it. It was so fantastic and absorbing, that I will forever remember the

voice singing behind the door at the end of the corridor, where the mattress for one of “the research projects” was placed on the floor. I discovered later that Kabakov’s installation was called “total-installations”.

There are obvious traces of the influence of both Margiela and Kabakov in my work. One example of this comes from my school work. In 1992 I did the installation “Hommage Malevitj”. (Imageref_11). I used the painting Sportsmen by Malevitj to build an installation; old clothes were cut and sewn together, dictated by the colour scheme from the Malevitj painting; and hung from hangers and benches used in locker rooms.

What I have not analysed previously, is the methods and thoughts behind their work in relation to mine. As a matter of fact, both Margiela and Kabakov are both rather mysterious figures. I have not seen one image of Martin Margiela himself, nor read an interview with him. The mystique seems to be intentional.

Kabakov is interviewed in the Phaidon book about the art. He speaks of the differences between Western installation art and Eastern installation art. On one hand, he sees the roots of Western installation art in Happenings and Actions. There, the installation works as some kind of trace of events frozen in time. He states that on the other hand, the origins of the Eastern European installation lies in painting.

“Here the viewer falls into the painting, makes the passage to the other side of the glass, enters into the painting”15

Kabakov uses a lot of words, not about his artwork but within his art. The use of made-up narratives as a vehicle for the installation, I can trace back to my own work. The short story about the Indian goddesses visiting Gothenburg, presented on the gallery door of the exhibition THREE, is one example.16 This is a way to introduce the audience to the back story of the installation and the design of the clothes. (Imageref_12-14)

Margiela does not use a lot of words except as very short explanations accompanying his collections. There are usually more images to explain the collections, than there are words, with the words functioning as a way to explain the concept behind his work. For example, in an early work he enlarged the clothes of a Barbie doll, the knits where knitted with yearn as thick as a wrist, the buttons where enlarged to the size of plates. This was a new conceptual way to work with fashion design, which gave a very strong

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aesthetic result. A question to explore further in my work, is how I

engage with words, and how do the stories that I feel are necessary to tell, fit into the non-verbal methods that I also work with.

In the writing of Foucault, I have found a reference to fantasy and logic in relation to the image.17 Here Fou-cault is explains the difference in between a “normal” or an “insane” one. The craziness is to give the value of the image, or the fantasy or dream, a total and absolute truth. The fantasies are built with stories that are said to be true, it is logical inside its own frame, as an image. It is built of rules that create logic inside its own system, which can be viewed as an image with a frame. The insanity is said to start when the frames of the system are not noticed and one is acting inside of this logic, without a possibility to step outside of the system/frame.

I see a connection in the building of worlds with their own logic in fashion design. When you step into the clothes and live in the fantasy of the clothes, then it can be said that you live inside the image of that world. You are not looking objectively, or interpreting a certain kind of fashion; you are living the image that the clothing wants to create. Fashion as a form of insanity?

Inside Kabakov’s installations everything is logical, and derives from strict rules and logic. There are obvious reasons for things appearing the way they do. Here I see a connection to the idea of stepping into the image/painting that Kabakov references. Perhaps the position coming from the Eastern art worlds has an influence when we talk about “total installations”. Perhaps even the inclination by the artisthim/herself to engage in a performativity that blurs the boundaries between Life and Art, also blurs the subject and the object of the artist him/herself.

Here the artist’s relation to the artwork is one not to question the artwork, but a way for the artist to actually enter into one’s own image and live within the artwork itself.

Could this relationship serve as a reminder that this kind of engagement in total installations and performative art, is of a momentary kind for a reason? The trap of insanity is just a place we are tempted to visit but not to be forever caught in. A Kabakov installation is permanently installed in a flat somewhere in Paris. I can imagine that the door to enter the installation is something to rejoice in. A door providing the possibility of entering and exiting…not

trapped by the Kafkanian quality that lies hidden in our lives.Further exploration is needed in the area where

performance in art and fashion work, and is placed in relation to conducting research in an art, based on the performativity lived. Artists who work in this area will, sometimes, give you answers from the inside the logic of his/her piece. The idea of objectivity in science has to form a path to an idea where the performative subject is included.

The methods used by artists and fashion designers engaged in this particular kind of performativity, identity play, and role play, should be explored much more on my part.

In my work, the everyday is part of the artwork, but art is also becoming something affecting my everyday. I find it hard to dress at all without having a meaning in the form of a narrative or a concept behind it. I also have noticed that I, at times, purposely create traps for people by dressing.

An example is an outfit, purchased at H&M, that I have worn this autumn at several occasions. The combination of the the clothes gives the outfit the appearance of being home sewn, or maybe put together from second hand shopping. Not for the professional H&M shopper, who would immediately detect the specific garments, but for others not spending time in H&M stores. When wearing it, I have gotten a lot of positive response for that outfit as something unique and special, and I take peculiar pleasure in telling people that it is commonplace and inexpensive. The trap that I wish people to fall into is the misjudgement of the external, the complication of the obvious, and to create an air that when one encounters a fashionable outfit, it should be provoke a kind of distrustfulness.

[EPHEMERA]

Fashion changes, clothing tears and disintegrates, fash-ion promises something new, but becomes old and impos-sible to wear. It is never still, you can not frame it and is in a never ending state of flux.

The phenomena of fashion is about change and the ever flowing aspect of change. As in Octavia E. Butlers book “Parable of the Sower”, fashion inhibits the double nature of man’s ephemeral nature and obsession of eternity.

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All that you touchYou Change

All that you ChangeChanges you

The only lasting truthIs Change

GodIs Change

EARTHSEED: THE BOOK OF THE LIVING

Fine art also has this dichotomy inherit within it, but usually comes in the disguises of eternity, preservation, credibility and of stability. Fashion is not to be trusted and is always in a state of perishability. The times when fine art and fashion meet, is when there is a similar interest in the ephemeral. The fashion sense is also sensitivity to beauty and fragility, which it sometimes shares with art.

In the text Mourning of the Moment, I point to a possible way of dealing with ephemeral nature, which is to make grief and mourning a point of departure, into the area of fashion/fine art. In the exhibition THREE done at gallery 54 in May 2006 it became evident to me that what I thought was a celebration of the three Indian goddesses, in disguises of humans, meeting in Gothenburg, rather became a mourning of the loss of the moment that is always impossible to recapitulate. The loss is a way to escape the position of defending the nature of fashion. Grieving is here a fruitful position and one where I have found that analysis of the work is possible. The loss of something, for me, is always evident in artistic research, and can be used as a way to understand fashion, especially in the context of fine art.

We have to take in account that for most people fashion is something that is “largely worn by women and designed by effeminate men. Fashion is crafted by subaltern materials by demeaned, inferior processes such as stitching and sewing. Whereas art, imagined as made with nobler materials, is the pure expression of an individual will in which the hand – and it´s usually a male hand – gracefully and immediately answers thought. What I have just caricatured is the discourse that by which Renaissance critics and painters refashioned their social status from subordinated artisans to authoritative artists.”18

This is what Chris Townsend writes in his book:”

Rapture, Art´s Seduction by Fashion”. He also writes about fashion playing a role in relation

to fine art. “ I´d suggested that Frank Moore´s representation of Kate

Moss as Medusa literalizes a number of fears that permeate critical resistance to fashion and its embrace of art. There is a kind of castration anxiety at work, a dread that this is might be what art really looks like behind the veil of representation: disempowered, emasculated. There are two distinctive and often contradictory positions here, and my emphasis on gender in addressing the first of them is not accidental.” 19

Townsend does not get deep into the psychoanalysis of the Medusa myth, but I am willing to agree of the fear of the loss of masculinity that he is pointing out and feeling threatened by or even intimidated by the commercial domain of fashion. Fashion is less morally valuable than art because of its ephemeral and untrustworthy identity. Art in society is also “looked over the shoulder” and has problems of making politicians and other understanding that it is something meaningful and important. I think that the tendency to defend something could it be fashion or artistic research comes from being positioned in a demeanour place in a system of power.

“What both fail to deliver is the satisfaction of ultimate meaning…Art as much as fashion is inadequate, its promises of profundity and historical effectiveness chimeric...” 20

For me, art and fashion share the basis of passion, desire and pleasure. Loss and the mourning are of value and true to the actual form of activity that I am engaged in. It can also be seen as a feminist method, instead of aiming for approval, you look to other playgrounds. To acknowledge loss and the position of mourning, it is possible to take a positive stance and continue on.

A problem usually described, in relation to fashion, is the problem of women’s own objectification. In fine art fashion usually stands for the inequality of the society. If only fashion did not exist we (women, men are already free from the heavy load of fashion) would be free and not repressed anymore.

I regard this as a simplification of how the relation between subject and object works. In fashion there is absolutely a first person and an active subject, but the subject has an open relation to its object like character. The experience is carried out by a speechless object like body and in this complex mix it is easy to take the first impression as the true one.

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One example of this in fine art is Hannah Wilkes Super-t-art (Imageref_02), which opened up for a subject, the possibility of the object. In the photographs, she uses a piece of fabric and her own body and is, through gestures and alternative wrappings of the fabric, taking on multiple identities. She is playing her own identity, even her identity as a woman when she in a crucial picture resembles Jesus on the crucifix. She plays with others and her own imagination of self.

Fashion is about self-fashioning, and in a constant change that we desire, but also distrust and loathe. We might need the illusion of a stable identity, and clothes are of good for this, as well as for changes in identity.

The subject-like character of the object in fashion projects is a transitory one, one that is never in a fixed position. This nomadic position, causes it to belong to feminist projects.

(NOTES)

1 Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1988.

P.1792 Townsend, Chris, Rapture: Art’s seduction by fashion, New York:

Thames & Hudson, 2002. p. 34-353 Kaprow, Allan, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2003.4 Kaprow, Allan, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2003, p.2505 ibid., p.1856 ibid., p.1867 Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Lon-

don: Penguin Books Ltd, (1959) 1990.8 Cunningham, Bill, “Fashion du Siècle”, Details, 1990, March is-

sue, vol. ?9 Cunningham, Bill, “Fashion du Siècle”, Details, 1990, March is-

sue, vol. ?10 ibid., p.18011 Trans/Mission: Art in Intercultural Limbo, catalogue and exhibi-

tion by Rooseum center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, 27/8-27/10 1991.

12 Ibid., p.1413 ibid., p.1514 ibid., p.62-8315 Ilya Kabakov, London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1998.16 Three Indian goddesses paid a visit to Göteborg and had set

up a meeting at Harry Hjörnes plats, a square in the city. They were dressed in denim jeans, a shirt and a jacket to fit in.

17 Foucault, Michel, ”Vansinnets historia under den klassiska epo-ken”, Lund: Arkiv förlag, (1961) 1992.

18 Townsend, Chris, Rapture: Art´s seduction by fashion, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002. p.18

19 ibid., p.1820 ibid., p.21

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03 SECRETS[PASSING IN VENICE 050804 - ] 050804 VENICE

photo: Kajsa G Eriksson

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photo: Ulrika Gunnarsdotter

[PASSING IN VENICE 050804 - ] 051030 GÖTEBORG

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photo: Fredric Gunve

[PASSING IN VENICE 050804 - ] 051122 GÖTEBORG

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[THE RELATION BETWEEN FASHION AND FINE ART]

If you look into the eyes of a fashion designer, you can usually detect a certain kind of fire, a fire that comes from not sleeping much and a demanding vision. The tradition is that you do what it takes to do fashion. To put out your own brand, to see the clothes on models or hanging in a store can be the one reward after thousands of work hours. But this fire and passion, where does it come from? Fashion as something to die for?

In my background the fashion education came before the fine art education. This has created the situation where I have found myself doing fashion projects in a fine-art context. It has also made me have a double perspective, from fashion and from fine art.

I have noticed that the presumptions in fashion about fine art are usually making it hard for fashion designers to elaborate on ideas that they might find moving towards fine art. In fine art there is another situation. There you can include all kind s of phenomena and methods and still claim it to be contemporary art and not fashion design. The traditions of appropriation and “Estetique Relationel” have been very dominant in contemporary art the recent years.

This situation has created a particular kind of fashion projects in the fine art scene which are ambiguous, they seem to have a passion for fashion and clothing and still they are keeping a certain distance to the phenomena. My own projects can be interpreted as such even if it is not my intention.

I would prefer to consider my work as trying to stretch the genre of fashion in regard of its possibilities of inheriting new and additional artistic possibilities. I do it because I see the mediums potential as having, in its own right, something to add to culture.

This position claiming that fashion is of value to see and experience without always buying it. It is important to create a discourse of fashion in an appropriate way, and it is important to educate fashion designers in a way that make them notice the inherit potential of their own medium.

I have during the last months met and talked to some people that I regard as being some of the new generation of fashion/art. In the end of this text you will find links to their work on the internet.

Here are some notes and comments of what was said during these meetings:

061210 STOCKHOLM

Present: Therese Dahlqvist (founder of “Fashionplay” and “Appearances”, a student at Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm) Helena Hertov (founder of “Fashionplay” and a student at University College of Arts, Craft and Design, Stockholm) Linda Spjuth (founder of “We allow” and a student of the Fine Art Academy, Umeå University) Anders Berggren (founder of “We allow” and a student at Beckmans College of Design) Ulrika Gunnarsdotter (founder of “Artist Clothing”) Kajsa G Eriksson (a doctoral degree candidate in fashion design, enrolled in the doctoral program at HDK, School of Design and Crafts, Göteborg University)

Our discussion started out talking mostly about boundaries than actual possibilities in fashion/fine art. I got a feeling that everyone found themselves in particular situations that made it hard for them to do exactly what they really wanted to do. Therefore it was interesting to hear about the collaborations between, Anders and Linda, their project We Allow and Fashionplay, the project of Therese and Helena.

I was curious about the driving forces behind their interest for fashion/fine art projects, at this point it was hard to articulate clearly.

Linda had a believed that fashion was related to non-verbal expressions and for her it was about:

“building worlds that are showing in every pore”In relation to this we could all agree on fashion

designers common inability to express their works in words. Rather you find the opposite trend that they tend to try to get away from explaining their works with words.

We also talked about the importance of the actual clothes in fashion projects. Here each one agreed that the concept or the “world” presented was of more importance than the actual clothes.

In relation to fashion shows the attitudes were clearly differing. Coming from a fine art background, it seems that you are more inclined to regard a fashion show as something tedious and an activity repressive of women. If you come from a fashion education the fashion show

04 IN YOUR HOUSE

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is usually regarded as the ultimate artistic expression. The different opinions seemed to have the background in different experiences in opportunities of seeing good and interesting fashion shows.

It is also a difference in attitude how you judge fashion in relation to feminism. Coming from fine art you are more inclined to regard fashion as objectifying women and repressing women.

We talked about the ethical in having control, not only of the production of the clothes, but also of the styling, the photographs, the hair and make-up. As a tradition in fashion it is a collaborative work and when this collaboration is driven from a predominantly commercial point of view, it is inclined to take path that fashion has travelled before, and that is the objectification of women.

We also talked about the individual and subjective position of the designer/artist in fashion design. The position of the subject/artist dressed and objectifying oneself was a similar experience. We could share examples of the confusion from others when, by wearing your art, made yourself into an art piece and still talking from the position of the artist at the same time. This could make it difficult in making decisions in relation to the performative, in presenting fine art.

The attitude of not caring too much of the context where one presents one work was proposed. The idea was that if one gets as much attention and money as individual you do not have to worry too much about the genre that your work is presented in.

This idea is grounded in the fact that at a certain level of fame you are not questioned if you are belonging to a certain genre or not. Two examples, which I can think of, are Matthew Barney and Björk. If you are famous it is easier to move in between genres using your name as the identification of your art.

070111 GÖTEBORG

Present: Emma Fälth (works with Fashion Deluxe, founded by Lisa Sandström, Emma has been an architecture student at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg) Kajsa G Eriksson (a doctoral degree candidate in fashion design, enrolled in the doctoral program at HDK, School of Design and Crafts, Göteborg University)

Fashion Deluxe have a double vision of their work. One part is to act like an agent for new young fashion designers and to build a platform for them to have a first possibility to sell some of their work. This can also be seen from the perspective of and audience, a possibility for people to find, see, buy and wear new and interesting clothes. When Fashion Deluxe decides which to show, they do not choose from how much they think it will sell but based on how interesting they think the work is.

Another vision of Fashion Deluxe is to show interesting fashion design from new fashion designers or student work at design schools. The aims of Fashion Deluxe are to experiment with the presentation, showing and selling of new fashion and also to work in a close relationship to the design educations.

This brought up the discussion of finding the project in-between a commercial system and state funding. It is a grey zone and sometimes very difficult decisions have to be taken. It becomes hard to work with a project when the economical side of it is so diverse and complicated. Many of the fashionprojects are in this complicated situation. If you get funding it will only last for a shorter period, and if you want to make it an entirely commercial project it will loose its possibilities to choose designers who does not sell.

This is linked to the phenomena that I was talking about at the beginning of the text, the driving forces behind this kind of projects are not usually of a commercial kind, there are other driving forces.

Internet has become a venue for this kind of projects. It is cheap to show and it is fast. A place like myspace is not only a place where you can find music, it is also possible to pick up fashion, and people show their projects, music and artwork here. In these places it is possible to make friends with others and to create your own context and genre. Fashion and fine art relationship seem to converge and to overlap more easily on the internet.

070111 GÖTEBORG

Present: Emma Fälth (works with Fashion Deluxe, founded by Lisa Sandström, Emma has been an architecture student at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg) Kajsa G Eriksson (a doctoral degree candidate in fashion design, enrolled in the doctoral program at HDK, School of Design and Crafts, Göteborg University)

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At our second meeting we talked about Emmas actual work in Fashion Deluxe. She did a fashion show for Fashion Deluxe this autumn. Her main idea for the show was to get the clothes on the body and not hanging on hangers. She also recorded the background stories of the clothes that the designers gave her. By this she was adding some discourse to the clothes.

She worked with ideas about the “catwalk” and wanted to leave the actual catwalk empty. Instead she wanted to put the models on “front row” and the clothes on the chairs. In the end it became a row of chairs and the models would move from one chair to the other and take the clothes on and off. The models where instructed to use everyday movement in their slow changing of clothes. She used two models a male and female. The soundtrack was parts of the stories from the designers mixed on top of each others making it into an ambient sound atmosphere.

One of her concerns was what the show played out amongst the audience that was there looking, their own performative position in relation to the models and in relation to each other.

We talked about how showing clothes on hangers can be a really bad idea but under certain conditions, where the trying out of the clothes together feel natual for the people engaging in this activity it can be really effective. A good example is the fashion show that was produced by Artist Clothing at Södra Teatern in Stockholm in 2003 (later add Artist Clothing ref. from fashion show)

Emma commented on a discussion with an colleague and a student at fine art academy. Emma expressed her dissatisfaction with the momentary quality of the fashion show, it was over in such a short time and she wanted to find ways to prolonge it. Emma had elaborated with ideas of the possibilities of doing an exhibition. Her artist friend, on the other hand, appreciated the dynamics in the fashion show format and thought the static structure of the exhibition format was not something to aim for.

I take this as an example of the tension and desires between the momentary, ephemeral quality of fashion and the more stable and preservational quality of fine art.

In my experience fashion projects have been used as either sophisticated advertisement tool in a commercial fashion business, or as a way of tapping into the energy of popular culture and youth in stiff fine art institutions.

[LINKS]

www.artistclothing.comwww.pipel.sewww.fashionplay.orgwww.appearances.sewww.fashiondeluxe.sewww.ideal-berlin.comwww.nylonmag.com/gallery/art_attack.htmlwww.style.com/fashionshows/index.htmlwww.hintmag.comwww.showstudio.comwww.susancianciolo.comwww.fluxuries.comwww.placedmagazine.comwww.momu.beFashion Projects, issue 2 2006/2007www.myspace.com/styleslut

(Comments should be added to each link)

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[MOURNING THE MOMENT]

Here, in this short film, I would like to present a project done in 2006, consisting of a performance in Göteborg on the 31st of March, and the documentation of this performance, which was presented as part of the installation at the exhibition at Galleri 54 in Göteborg in May, 2006. My aim is to address questions surrounding the documentation of the performance and whether this work is an example of R&D and not only an art or design project.

The exhibition, THREE, (TRE) is based on a story of three goddesses from India, who have decided to meet at Harry Hjörnes plats in the centre of Gothenburg. The relationship between the unique and conformity is dealt with in the design of the clothes, consisting of denim jeans, shirts, and jackets, made to fit the goddesses with their many arms. Identity and awareness of the other are areas of interest, as is the play between the inconvenient and convenient. The balancing act between attention and camouflage in public space is also an important aspect.

To see the film online: http://www.idungerdesign.com/kajsageriksson/

05 THREE

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[LIES]

There came a time when I could no longer tell a story about myself and my life. My identity had slipped away from me. I could not get it back until I was able to invent a new story that fit the present situation.

Stories are a strong builder of identity. The loss of one’s stories can be connected to the loss of one’s idealized images or roles. Clothing and fashion are both used to create these images and roles. In extreme situations, like war, the altering or stripping of clothes are severe and horrific ways of stealing a person’s identity.

I am focusing on three characteristics in the shaping of identity: decoration, rules and process. They are used in the creation of the narratives, images, and roles used for the establishing of identity. My interest lies in distinguishing the characteristics in the connection between narrative, identity, fashion and clothing.

In his book Fashion Classics, Michael Carter references the Victorian text Sartor Resartus, by the nineteen century author, Thomas Carlyle. In this text, he writes about clothing and how it can not be only considered as functional, because it would result in “mere externalities”. Carlyle sees clothing as ornament, decoration, and as being “the first spiritual want of a barbarous man”. This is one of the first references to clothing as an anthropological matter. 1

In this case, Clothing refers to the spirituality of man. Later in history, the idea of fashion becomes closely connected to time. Borrowing the idea from Carlyle, of ornament and decoration being a spiritual act, spiritual here being something that is a need outside the utilitarian and of a purpose that is not directly life-sustaining. In the act of ornamentation and decoration a certain contextual meaning can be added through the use of narrative. An example today is the different meaning of the colour and lacing of Dr. Martens boots. The connection between the narrative and the decoration is closed to someone not sharing the knowledge of the narratives. It can be seen as a sharing and hiding game and a group and identity building through the combination of the decoration and narratives.

If fashion is connected to time, it is also related to process. Rules, on the other hand, are the tools which we use to try to control anything that is in process. Rules can be seen as a starting point in experiments, plays, and games.

Another characteristics I have been elaborating with is collage, it has a close relation to image, the possibility

of cracking of the image, and the possibility of inventing new stories from the old. I need to investigate more in collage and assemblages techniques as part of the shaping of identity and in the relation to narrative, fashion and clothing.

As I have stated earlier, fashion and clothing are areas of non-verbal communication. Clothing has its greatest power prior to conversations taking place. Story-telling has a great power as an identity marker, and can overshadow any clothing. However, there are certain moments when the individual’s stories about themselves, and their lives, are not at play. Clothing gains its strength as non-verbal communication found in groups, and in the flow of people.

It’s interesting when the impact of image/role, fashion/clothing, becomes translated into words. This is usually experienced in the passing comment.

Different kinds of these comments exist; the kind that are used to put you down and to question; those that are related to curiosity, and seek understanding; and those that wish convey positive feedback. Positive feedback is something we use in our social interaction with friends, when we give positive response to what our friends and family are wearing. This kind of feedback can also be directed at strangers in certain situations, and is usually understood as being friendly.

The comments I refer to are those that are provoked by what you wear, and are given by strangers in the street. It’s fascinating how something worn, can so strongly provoke a feeling that a verbal statement has to be made.

The most common reactions are not even verbal, but are gestures like the opinionated “thumbs up“, or “thumbs down”. The comments and gestures that I prefer mainly state the obvious.

Once, in Berlin, I was wearing a skirt I had made, a red skirt with two holes cut out at the bottom. (Imageref_15&16). A man in the street saw me, pointed with his finger to the holes and then cried out, happily, “Löcher!” Some time later, in Sweden, my three year old niece, acted similarly, pointed at the holes, actually put her finger through one, and exclaimed “Hål!” (hole!).

I enjoy these reactions, not only in that they are non-opinionated, but as an interaction with me wearing something. The passing comment can be seen as confirmation and acknowledgement, like a verbal mirror. I regard these interactions as mutual, and I use my own smile and gaze to confirm that I have received what was said.

06 THE FINAL SOUND

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I regard the passing comments as witnesses of my existence. Furthermore, they are connected to storytelling, but relate more to the potential of a story to emerge.

As part of my doctoral work in 2006, I have been wearing a mirror brooch.

[part 03 SECRETS [051122 Göteborg]. While wearing the brooch, I have received many

passing comments. Here are a few of them:A 13 or 14 year old girl on the tram, with a purple

and black Mohawk, states:A mirror! (where upon she immediately looks at herself

in the mirror.)Walking along Vasagatan in Göteborg, a man points at

my brooch, smiles and says.The sun!The mirror broche has provoked many reactions, not

only positive ones. Some people react negatively when they see themselves in the mirror. Some make a short, intense analysis of why I am wearing it.

The brooch has also provoked many questions. For Example:

Is it an instrument? Is it for protection? A man working in the cashier of a grocery store

says to me, while paying for my groceries, “Aha, it will show different people in the brooch, well, then one can not say it is handsome, nice.” (meaning, that he could not flatter himself, because at that point he was reflected in the mirror.)

I have noticed that the Mirror is mostly commented on by men, some even think it is a device for me to meet single men. I have also noticed that it is easier to make verbal contact with strangers, when I am wearing the brooch.

One of my favourite comments comes when I meet two men at Gamla Masthugget, and one of them states:

Here comes a mirror girl! This comment is appealing because it provokes ideas

of stories that could be tied to the Mirror girl. The Mirror girl may have a secret identity and unusual strengths like Spiderman, for example.

Clothing and accessories are related to a possible narratives and possible identities.

The process, in relation to time, has the three characteristics of time, the past, future, and present. Storytelling and narrative deal with memory and reshape

history to fit our identity within the moment. Clothing and fashion are, on the other hand, connected to our aspirations, hopes for the future, and work as an affirmation in the present. In our identity, memory and aspiration meet, and they are both created by our fantasy. We are myth makers and liars, and we need the myths and lies to be acknowledged and witnessed by others.

In the documentary Back, fashion designer Ann-Sofie Back states that she works with “aspirational fashion”.2 The documentary illustrates that fashion-designers work with the idea of the myth making and lies, not only communicating with others, but also points to the possibility of inspiring oneself by the way of dressing.

The importance of the lie and the invented story, in shaping of identity comes alive in the film Big Fish by Tim Burton.

The expression “big fish” has different meanings. It can mean the really big fish, the trophy that every fisher wants to catch, and also to the stories that fishermen tell each other where the truth of the size of the fish is a bit stretched.3

In film, the father has been altering the mundane stories of his life, to become fantastic stories about giants and hidden worlds. His son, who has always listened to the stories over and over again is pretty tired of them, and regards his father to be the greatest liar in his life. He thinks of his father as an escapist, and one who can not handle the reality of life. They meet when the father is on his deathbed, and the father asks the son to tell him the end of the story, he needs to know before he dies. So the son continues his father’s story by adding the last chapter, wherein he becomes the big fish he always was, and is released in the sea by the son.

Clothing reveals something about who we are, and who we wish to be. In the film, the lies and the stories not only tell something about the father, the stories are the father. Following this, and from one perspective, clothing can be said to be who we are.

The narratives, or possible narratives, are important aspects of fashion design. It is also connected to the shaping of identity and for this, clothing is used.

In this project, the capture of possible narratives, some perhaps revealed in passing comments, is a goal for the project, and even a guideline for the design of the clothes themselves. In this case, a specific interest in design that provokes interaction between people.

(NOTES)

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1 Carter, Michael, Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes, Oford,

New York: Berg, 2003. p.82 Documentary by Stefania Malmsten/Maria BenSaid/Göran Ols-

son, www.pipel.se3 by Esbjörn Guwallius, www.film.nu

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[PARTLY BLIND]

”The picture essays Bill Cunningham has contributed to The Times - since 1989 in a column called “On the Street” and for the years before that under other titles – have played a compelling part in recording the ephemeral nature of self-inven-tion.” 1

The streets and dressed people have had a power of attraction to many people, philosophers as well as others. The Arcade Projects 2 by Walter Benjamin is a well known reference; others who have engaged in the body and space philosophy are the phenomenologist Mearly-Ponty, and the sociologist Goffman. Their thoughts about space have been highly influential.

While Merleau-Ponty is good at articulating the spati-ality and the perception of space, Goffman provides us with concrete accounts of how this occurs in the social world. For Goffman the spaces of the office, and the shopping mall, operate with different rules and determine how we present ourselves and how we interact with others. He reminds us of the territorial nature of space and describes how when using space, we have to negotiate crowds, dark quiet spaces, etc. Walking and moving in public space is, in his sense, part of the creation of the space itself.

Entwistle writes in the book “Body Dressing” 3 about spaces being a gender issue. We act differently in space depending on our gender.

Much of my work has involved women and their dress. I have no intention to limit the work to gender is-sues, but it is an area I would like to explore further.

I see fashion in relation to time, process and as an engagement in the moment. The moment constantly gives away to a new moment, placing movement as a central theme in fashion and clothing. Walking can be seen in the light of a flow of movement. Walking is an everyday experi-ence that is taking place especially in pedestrian cities, like London, Paris and New York. The fluid quality of fashion and the influence that walking has on public spaces, firmly places fashion as something that moves. The catwalk is understandable, the movement and the fluidity not only resemble the movement on the street, but is, in its form, a metaphor of the characteristics of fashion. In the film ”Note-book on Clothes and Cities”, (1989) by Wim Wender and Yohji Yamamoto, the awareness of the connection between clothes, the catwalk and the city are evident.

An object that moves usually becomes blurry in photography. A special technique must be used in order to catch something moving without a blur. Movement while walking also blurs the vision and one can become partially blinded, while walking in the street. However, our senses are not separated and when the eyes become weak, our other senses become stronger. In my own experience, moving in the city engages senses other than vision, and in particular, hearing. The movement the body is also engaged in a rhythm that is connected to a certain space. Different cities have different rhythms, which I will explore and tap into.

This everyday connection between the motion of the body and its environment, gives some background to the interaction between fashion and music. I believe that sound is a large part of the fashion experience. I hear music in fashion, and I see fashion while experiencing music. In public space, one can use an i-pod in order to create private space, and can also dress to create this space. Many people use both music and dress to create a world of their own, as a demarcation in public space.

I have been observing and considering different posi-tions and ways that you encounter people in the street. When meeting with other people in the street, you engage in very different kinds of meetings, depending on your location in relation to the person you meet. Clothes can be looked at from a very long distance as silhouettes. At a closer range, you may see the whole person and the clothes as a whole entity and this seems to be preferred by photographers as in the example of the magazine ENCENS (Imageref_17-22.) At a third distance, you have a very close view, the clothing and the person become texture and folds, and on the whole, a tactile experience.

I will be using references from psychoanalysis to bet-ter understand this phenomenon. In her book, “Adorned in Dreams”, Elisabeth Wilson agrees with the authors of “Fash-ioning the Frame”, by Cavallaro and Warvick, that psycho-analysis can be of help in understanding fashion. She writes:

“Their literary and philosophic arguments illuminate some of the many ambiguities of dress and grant an insight into the melancholy dissatisfaction that so often accompanies the desire to achieve a desirable, a fashionable “appearance” (in itself an evocative and suggestive word).” 4

Here I will just mention some quotes from some other writers in order to continue with this analysis later.

The mirror stage by Lacan is what Neal Leach refers

07 THE FOREST

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to in his book “Camouflage”. When the child becomes inte-rested in the mirror it starts to model itself on that image and identify with it. Before it had been interacting with the mother and understanding them together as an entity. The child perceives itself for the first time as a separate being. He/she is no longer lost within an undifferentiated sea of sensations. This gives rise to an aggressive tension which to be resolved the subject must identify with its own image. This primary identification with the counterpart is what forms the ego. This primary identification is of high importance in order for the secondary identification to take place. The secondary identification the subject is able to identify with another object as a separate entity. This is what Leich is elaborating with, if I have understood it cor-rectly. With his own words:

“Moreover, it remains the basis of ego formation, such that the mirror stage might be described not as foundational but as a form of “intrusion” of the intellectual into the pre-existing emotional tie. The core of identity is therefore born in the process of weaning, for during that period the breast is, as it were, part of the child” 5

He continues to say in relation to the mirror, the double and images:

“With this we return to the question of the statue. For what is the image-the imago- etymologically but a form of statue? The subject becomes an object in a world of objects, and begins to forge its identity against and through those objects, as though through inanimate statues.” 6

In the end of the chapter he writes finally: “These two stages mark the two ends of the spectrum

in which human life is inscribed –alienation and oneness – but so too the terrain in which artistic expression operates. The dif-ference is subtle, but fundamental. It is the difference between Medusa, the mythological figure who petrifies anyone who gazes at her and turns them into inanimate statues, and Daedalus, the creative genius who brings statues to life. “ 7

I would like to take another example of Lacan and the mirror stage from the book “Return of the real“ by Hal Foster, he writes:

“Lacan mortifies this subject in the famous anecdote of the sardine can that, afloat on the sea and a glint in the sun, seems to look at the young Lacan in the fishing boat “ at the level of the point of light, the point at which everything that looks at me is situated” (95). Thus seen as (s)he see, pictured as (s)he pictures, the Lacanian subject is fixed in a double position, and this leads Lacan to superimpose on the usual cone of vision that emanates from the subject another cone that emanates from the object, at

the point of light, which he calls the gaze” 8

The use of theories of the gaze should be more deeply considered and what I have referred to here are just a few examples to get going.

I will be considering the descriptions of the mirror stage in relation to how we meet people, and also how im-ages and photographs of people in clothes are presented.

It is a certain span of the gaze; the gaze that comes close to the body, the body then is fragmented and re-sembles the infant’s relation to the mother, before the mirror stage. The position, at the other extreme end of the gaze would be the blinking of the eye that sees everything. The surveillance camera and the gaze create the feeling of being watched even when alone. There is a span between the completely absorbed and emotional gaze, and the all en-compassing intellectual eye. These two different looks can be seen in two different kinds of photography and painting, one showing the fragmented body and engaging in textures, material and folds in clothing, the other, represented by a still camera showing a view.

In fashion photography, the entire span is not typi-cally used, but one can see these two characteristics in the showing of details and material of the clothes on one hand, and in showing the silhouette of the dressed body in a loca-tion on the other.

In between the two is where the identifications take place.

As for fashion and clothing we can regard it as sliding between the interface between the body and the clothes and the interface between the dressed body and public space. We move not only in the city and the streets and in between our senses, we also move in between these differ-ent ways of experiencing our self and the environment.

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(NOTES)

1 Trebay, Guy, The Age of Street Fashion, The Times, October 27, 2002.

2 Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project, Cambridge, Mass & Lon-don, Eng: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

3 Entwistle, Wilson (eds). Body Dressing. Oxford: Berg, 2001.4 Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity,

London: IB Taurus & Co Ltd, (1985) 2003, p.2735 Leich, Neil, Camouflage, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006

p.1626 Leich, Neil, Camouflage, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.

p.162-1637 Leich, Neil, Camouflage, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.

p.1688 Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real, Cambridge, Mass & London,

Eng: The MIT Press, 1996. p..

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[FASHION MOMENTS]

In the park Slottskogen, I am walking and passing a woman. She is dressed all in red, red trousers, red vest, red sweater and big black sunglasses. I see her and my intellect becomes blocked; I am looking curiously, and feel emptied, swallowed. For a moment, time stands still and it affects me.

Afterwards the question, why is she wearing only red? Memories returned of my own youth when I wore all red in a dance class. I still don’t know why the red she was wear-ing acted as a trigger.

Moments like this are an important part of my work. Although they happen out of my control, I suspect I have trained myself for them. They are a source of energy to me, and afterwards I tend to remember the moment distinctly. Even if the moment lasts for only three seconds, it seems to be a very long time. They are engraved in my mind in a particular way.

I think about the fashion moment as something hap-pening very quickly and in a passing mode. It can even be a something unintended that brings the fashion moment about. It could be something that you experience internally, or a combination of outside events that causes the mind leap into a state of fascination.

I regard the fashion moment as a passing meeting, a mutual meeting in a special sense. Fashion moments are rare, not an everyday experience, and are experiences that people in fashion feed from.

Simmel writes about the fashion moment in the book “Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes” by Michael Carter:

“Fashion never happens in any fixed point in time or space. Groups or individuals are never fully fashionable and but are always in the process of becoming fashionable or descend-ing into unfashionability, and, in all probability, doing both at the same time. The time of Fashion is multiple, fragmented and, most importantly, dispersed across the entire social fabric.”

This is Simmel’s concept of the fashion moment, but the fashion moment can be said to have different charac-teristics. One is of regulation, and the other taps different types of energies. Energy directed towards something else, something new, not yet thought of even. The kind of fashion moments that are regulative are very opinionated, and are the ones we use when making quick judgements, based on peoples look and clothes. However, other kinds of fashion moments do exist, and are separate from approval or disap-proval, admiration or disregard.

It is a moment that begins with a sense of curiosity; this very individual and personal sense of curiosity can grow into a feeling of astonishment. I regard this fashion mo-ment in relation to the more analytical and colder fashion moments. I suspect that if fashion got it’s only energy from an intellectual point of analysis, of what is and what is not, the energy of fashion would vanish very fast. The moment where judgement is overthrown by astonishment is the fashion moment where my interests lie.

In regard to this reasoning, it is interesting to use the two-fold nature of relation to the world that Buber writes about in his book “I and Though”. Although, it may be potentially problematic to use such a high strung philoso-phy with so many heavy inclinations and references, I have decided to test it out, and to remember that we are dealing with High Fashion here, and not merely dirty laundry.

Buber’s philosophy is founded on the relation, the mutual relation.

“Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.” 1

“Only when every means has collapsed does the meeting come about.” 2

He names this kind of meeting, the Thou-relation. He talks about the two different approaches that are always involved in our lives, the It-relation and the Thou-relation. In the It-relations there is always a use of the other and this creates a distance. In the Thou-relationship there is no dis-tance and time and place are of no importance. He writes that, to man, the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold nature.

As an artist/designer you have your Thou and It moments while working. You can not always be in a Thou relationship with the world. But he writes further:

“The It is the eternal chrysalis, The Thou the eternal butterfly-except the situations do not always follow one another in clear succession, but often there is happening confusedly entangled”.3

The street is always a place for interaction, differ-ent kinds of meeting. It is also a place where, together, we shape the knowledge of the world and the culture that we are living in.

In 03 SECRETS [Passing in Venice], I have acted as my own medium, in a meta-discourse. The results are clothing, objects, performances, and are presented in the seminar as photographs.

08 M

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First, is a gradual enlargement of a photograph taken in Venice, at the Biennale, in front of The Swedish Pavilion. There is a woman looking at me in the photograph. At the time I took the picture, I never saw her looking at me. I became fascinated by her presence, after discovering her existence in the photograph, some time later. In this case, the astonishment and mutual meeting took place not at the actual moment of the meeting, but displaced in time. It could also be said that, the meeting took place between me and the photograph, which follows the Buber’s idea that “Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, nor can it ever take place without me.”

The Thou meeting between me and the photograph could be compared to the story by Buber,”I consider a tree”, in which he discusses that when considering the tree, he becomes bound up in relation to it. He writes:

“I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness. He also writes: I encounter no soul or dryad of the tree, but the tree itself.“

I am not claiming that, in my astonishment with the photograph, I am giving it a conscience, but I do believe that there is a two-fold way of engaging with the world, whether it is a tree, a person in slottskogen, or a fashion photograph in a glossy magazine. I, myself, am an active part of giv-ing meaning to experiences, objects, and photographs, and also wish to point out that this activity can be focused and developed.

I recall a person I observed on the tram not too long ago. The person was looking down and speaking loudly. My initial thought was that it must be someone talking on their cell phone. Then, when looking a bit more carefully, I noticed that the person talking was not holding a cell phone, but a small photograph of another person.

This moment could be regarded as an instance when you must step inside the frame, and share it with whom you are meeting. This might sound very much like entering a dream state or even a brush with insanity. For me, these are the moments and the meetings that trigger me to create. These fashion moments are moments of inspiration, not merely a checking system for fashion dos and don’ts. In my work, the fashion moment has become the moment where the ideas for work to be carried out begin…the point of departure.

(Here I would like to write and to elaborate around the concept of becoming and mimesis)

(NOTES)

1 Buber, Martin, I and Thou, Scribner, New York, (1958) 2000 p.23. 2 Ibid. p. 26 3 Ibid. p.31.

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09 AT NIGHT

A clay sculpture of the goddess Durga from Kolkata

[WORK PROCESS]

Background/The background of the work for the exhibition THREE was a trip to Kolkata, India in Dec/Jan 05/06 and the performance done at Vasagatan with two people and the square suits, de-scribed in the chapter 01 REFLECTION [Introduction]. Also the work with the mirror brooch, 051030 GÖTEBORG och 051122 GÖTEBORG, described in chapter 03 SECRETS. I can see connected to this work and thoughts concern-ing sound and rhythm associated to walking in the street.

Interests/

The meeting and group of three people and the interest of the walking and moving in the city with this purpose were of interest. After the experience of doing the meeting performance at Vasagatan without any docu-mentation I was interested in exploring possible ways of doing documentation that worked well with my intentions and interests. I consider it being a story about Göteborg as a Swedish city and the people living there. Because of this and my experiences of Kolkata my interest was the relationship between the unique and conformity in dress-ing. I wanted to explore the play between blending in and sticking out, the balancing act between attention and cam-ouflage in public space.

The clothes were designed in order to fit the nar-rative following the performance and the exhibition. The story is of three goddesses from India, visiting Göteborg, who have decided to meet at Harry Hjörnes plats, a square in the centre of Göteborg. The clothes consist of denim jeans, shirts and jackets, made to fit the goddesses with their many arms.

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January 2006 Ideas/

Being a group of three and having a certain power from that group dynamic was an interesting reference. Here I worked with two images which became the basis for the performance work. It is one image of three women working at The University of Borås taken from a folder presenting the school. The other one is from a newspaper showing the group “Chicks On Speed” from Berlin, an image from them doing a performance in the street. I was fascinated by the bonding of a group of three, and how women in this case was depicted as being empowered in these groups of three. I was curious how we read this as a certain kind of pre-sentation, a sort of triptych. The American TV show “the Bewitched” is another reference where they, in the show, gain their powers from “the power of three”. I was also interested in how the three in each group looked similar but with slight differences in between.

Three women working at the University of Borås and the three members of the group “Chicks On Speed”.

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February 2006 The clothes/

The clothes style was inspired from a photograph from the magazine ID, where the proportions of the jacket in relation to the trousers were considered. The inspiration from not having shown pockets or buttons or any other details come from the collection “i” (2003) and from the clothes in the collection called cases which had a tight fit. The chose of flowing silk was also from the collection “i” and the loose cut garments that were called bags.

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All of the clothes were dated with the date of the performance.

Choosing denim was an obvious chose after studying people in the street of Göteborg, where 95% wear some kind of blue denim. I wanted them to look as if they were not jeans but still working as a connotation of jeans. The typical cut with an yoke in the back of the jeans were kept, the pockets were hidden and also there was no stitching except on the yoke. The button was exchanged for a hidden construction of tying the trousers in the waist but hidden behind the material. The stripes had two ideas behind of them, first they made as a bridge to the smoking jackets used for jackets and they were used on both sides of the legs to create a papery, 2-D and flat look. The inside of the jeans was done in a manner where I tried to make it look like it was paid as little attention to it as possible. For example there was not used any over-locking of the hems which will make them tear and break easier. The jeans shape and cut where built on a pair of trousers made for the cases of collection ”i”, which was never done in the end. The shape is a rather non-baggy, non-tight fit which is not exaggerating any part of the body; it rather makes it plainer.

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The shirts were designed for the goddesses’ man arms. The cut was taken from a second-hand (ca.1910-20) strict blouse and together with wide arms. The armholes on the front were made wider and in the back a whole were left.

Here the hiding of the buttons was also used. And the silk was tied at the end of the arms to create the puff.

The shoulder line was made as narrow as possible. The materials were white very fine quality cotton and for the arms a floral printed silk.

The collar was cut to create the look of a “father-killer” which was preferred by men in the second half of the nineties century.

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The jackets are altered second-hand smoking jackets. The chose of dark blue/black jackets was also from studying the streets of Göteborg. Dark jackets with this length are visually the most common one. The jackets were cut underneath the arms and then trimmed with golden bands which made an extra opening for the arms. The floral printed arms could then be used through this new opening. It all created a look where the jacket became more flat, at some points it looked like the wearer would be holding the suit in front of oneself. Martin Margiela did something similar when he was working for the house Hermés but instead of a smoking jacket using a trench coat (Imageref_21).

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The make-up was done very intuitively and closer to the actual performance date. I was done as three drawings of the faces and then a make-up artist did an interpretation of them at the actual day of the performance. Before that I had tested the effect of heavy black make-up inspired from Kolkata. I was interest to combine the eye make-up with the use of the gaze by the models.

Trying out eye make-up

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March 2006 Preparations for the performance/

At an early stage I had chosen the models. I wanted three people that new each other to make it a real meeting of friends. Three of my students at Textilhögskolan studying fashion design were asked and accepted. Finding the photographers was a bit harder, my first intention was to try to collaborate with photographers interested in documentary photography and the problems of shooting people in the street. I made a couple of inquiries into finding someone, but it became difficult. Most documentary photographers that I contacted were men and when I explained the project they all directed me to other photographers, “having an interest in fashion photography”, and they were all women photographers. I met one male photographer that was willing to work with me on this but then it was too late. If I have had a larger budget it might have not been the case. I decided to limit the project with using only female photographers and went with people I knew, other artists working in Göteborg. I was also one of the photographers. Then in came to finding three digital

cameras with similar lenses and also video camera that was planned to be stationary at Harry Hjörnes plats when the meeting took place.I had meetings with all the models and photographers discussing the project. I also set up meetings for the models and photographers to meet. Before the performance I also met and we made plans about which way to walk, how to work as a photographer and a model together. It was important for all of us to know why we were doing this and it was a lot to discuss. For example what will happen when they meet at the square and how should the models and photographers work together? One instruction for the models was to use the movements of their eyes and their gaze a lot. The photographers were instructed to try to use an inner rhythm in the way they were taking the photographs. The models also had to be dressed and put on make-up in their homes before the actual performance. There was a lot of logistics to consider. We were discussing a lot among us how to try to catch the moment, some problems of doing this was known before hand, like for example how the shutter of the digital cameras are sometimes very slow in taking the picture.

Having a meeting with the model Cecilia prior to the performance.

Modeller:Cecilia WickmanFrida PehrsonHanna Lepp

Assistent, hår och make-up:Kristina Andersson

Here doing a test shooting to figure out how the photographers and models should work together and how I could give them instructions.

Fotografer:Linda TedsdotterChristina SkårudKajsa G ErikssonFredric Gunve

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Me as photographer

060331 Göteborg The performance/

For the performance it was set up to have one photog-rapher following one model each from their home doors to Harry Hjörnes place. We all had a time set when to meet there so everyone set out at a little bit different time depending on how far you were from the square. At Harry Hjörnes there were a video camera and a person putting it on as soon as someone showed up.

This particular day it was raining and we had to move the meeting one hour ahead to have the weather clear up a bit. (A bit nerve wrecking)The experiences of the models were, as I understood it, positive. They felt good walking the street dressed-up. Another feeling was showing up when they were going home alone in the same clothes, I was told, suddenly they were not playing the part any longer but were themselves in weird clothes. I found myself comparing my own experiences as being the photographer and the model and I realised that I preferred being the model in the performances rather than the photographer.

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The rhythms between the images were done in a way where they could work as some kind of description of a personality. The couple of a model and a photographer had very different ways of working, Cecilia and Linda produced a lot of images and were very fast, Hanna and Christina were on the other hand slow and did not take that many images. Me and Frida were somewhere in between.My plan was to incorporate sound but the time was too short, in the installation the sound of the three video projectors became the sound of the film. Later for the conference Sensuous Knowledge I added me reading the text “Mourning the Moment”.

April 2006 Editing the material/

I knew I was going to use the stills, and the video material I had to consider how to use while editing. In the video I had gotten another meeting taped similar to my set up of the three goddesses, this happened out of my control. These three men dressed in brown with briefcases meeting, almost as a mirror of the meeting of the goddesses. So I decided to include that sequent.

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May 2006 Hanging the exhibition/

My idea for the room before hand was to have three projectors at the end of the room and to shoot them on three walls. By this you could stand in the middle having the three models moving towards you. I also wanted to show the clothes and having decided this I wanted to do some major change with the room of the gallery. I have had too many bad experiences from showing clothes in the “white cube”. It seems as if these two formats do not work at all well together. I decided to put up a light grey curtain all around the room and by this change the atmosphere of the space. My reference for this room was from Lynch “twin peaks” where he has a room with red curtain and a square floor. The story about the Indian goddesses visiting and meeting in Göteborg was put up on the door as a text and was included in the press release.Together with the noise of the projector I wanted to add something more to the room that was not visual, I added the burning incense from India. At the opening I was given flowers which I added in front of the images and together with the incense. The room became by this a sort of playground for me and others. The narrative could be continuing by this.I had some problems with the lightning of the room, mixing daylight and the light from the projectors.In retrospect I would have preferred to have the room closed with the curtains and the clothes lit with artificial light.

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060513 – 060604 The exhibition/

The show at the gallery 54 was very good experience, I found that people first was a bit confused but then seemed to take the time to see the whole of the short film. The changing of the room paid off when I got good feedback from people not recognising the room and feeling that they experiencing something new.One week after the opening when I could get some distance to the work I realised, from my perspective, what the exhibition was about. The show had not become a celebration of the moment which I had intended; it rather had become a mourning place for the lost moments of the performance. I realised this from some comments from the audience on the feeling of the room, the room was described as either a fancy dressing room or as a presentation room for coffins, an undertaker place. At least it had become a room of transformation, something concerning moving away and passing to the other side.

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061108 Paper presented at the conference

Sensuous Knowledge 3/

After the reflections after the exhibition I put together a text which became the paper which I presented together with the three projections in Bergen at the conference Sensuous Knowledge. I read the text aloud while showing the projections. I was wearing the clothes from the performance while doing this.

Method: The work methods seem to me to be of a repetitive kind, I seem to go from REFLECTION, to INTERPRETATION (gestaltning) and to PRESENTATION and again go back to reflection. It seems to be a circular movement. I also noticed that I tend to make as much as possible the performative as a part of the work process, or at least make it into a play. The flowers as being part of the exhibition is something which I see came from this notion. Maybe the word presentation in the work process could be exchanged for some other activity; maybe PLAY could be tested out. During this work process I have made a presentation at the point of the performance and then another at the point of the exhibition and then a third for the conference Sensuous Knowledge. The different positions of the work are something to be considered further in relation to R&D work.

Material: The materials shift with the different stages of the work. The textile is one, the digital image technology is another, making the installation becomes another kind of material and then the text is added too. I feel that I move in between a lot of materials, I do not feel I want to take anyone of them away, but rather I could imagine that there are better ways of working with them more closely together.Analysis: What came out after the whole work was a better knowledge of the relation between mortification and animation in the use of images in documentation. Here the stills became a mortification of an animated continuum, and the film became an animation of a series of frozen frames. This animation in the end releases something in regard to the gaze and the body I believe, this I can not explain further right now. I had an interesting remark from a fellow researcher at the conference in Bergen. She thought that

the arms of the goddesses could have something to do with the gaze and gazing. Maybe the many arms could be seen as a movement and this movement is somehow relating to the enhanced gaze of the goddesses. I wish to continue exploring documentation of momentary based work.I find the closed room by the curtain something to work further with, maybe less as a presentation room but as a room for play. The mourning aspect of the room I find intriguing and it is for me creating an extra space and I relate this to the extra space that I wish to create in the street. It was very interesting to me to have a comment from one in the audience of the exhibition that two of the models looked too much alike, and that it would have been better with someone that looked more different. This struck me as interesting because I knew the models therefore I could not see the resemblance between the two, because as persons they are very different. This made it rather clear that if you look for models for a certain visual purpose, a certain distance can be valuable. This is used in fashion of course except when a certain model becomes more of a trademark for the clothes. For me it is important to make conscious decisions about the relationship I am having with the models and the photographers while this is apparently affecting the result.

Göteborg 060213

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[DRAWINGS]

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10 SEVENTEEN SECONDS[IMAGE REFERENCES]

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

Asplund, Johan, Hur låter åskan, Göteborg: Bokförlaget Korpen, 2003.

Buber, Martin, I and Thou, New York: Scribner, 2000.

Carter, Michael, Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes, Oxford, New York: Berg, 2003.

Cunningham, Bill, “Fashion du Siècle”, Details, 1990, March issue, vol. ?

Entwistle, Wilson (eds). Body Dressing. Oxford: Berg, 2001.

Foucault, Michel, ”Vansinnets historia under den klassiska epoken”, Lund: Arkiv förlag, (1961) 1992.

Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London: Penguin Books Ltd, (1959) 1990.

Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1988.

Ilya Kabakov, London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1998.

Kaprow, Allan, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Leich, Neil, Camouflage, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.Molander, Bengt, Kunskap i Handling, Göteborg: Daidalos AB,

1996.

Warwick, Alexander and Cavallaro Dani, Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body, Oxford: Berg, 1998

Poerksen, Bernhard, The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Intro-ducing Constructivism, Exeter: Imprint Academic, (2001) 2005

Townsend, Chris, Rapture: Art´s seduction by fashion, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

Trans/Mission: Art in Intercultural Limbo, catalogue and exhibition by Rooseum center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, 27/8-27/10 1991.

Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: IB Taurus & Co Ltd, (1985) 2003.

CREDITS:

Ulrika Gunnarsdotter (Artist Clothing)Fredric GunveOtto von BuschHenric BeneschCecilia WikmanHanna LeppFrida PerssonLinda TedsdotterChristina SkårudJohanna Tymark (Galleri 54)The W. Media WorkshopsUlla E:son BodinThe Swedish School of Textiles at University of BoråsHDK, School of Design and Crafts, Gothenburg Universitythe Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, GothenburgUniversity

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