Mediated materiality and meaning, curating experience through the body and dress

Fashion & Performance; Materiality, Meaning, Media is an evolving research lead exhibition collaboratively curated by Jessica Bugg and Anna-Nicole Ziesche for the Design Hub, Melbourne in 2015 and is the performative development of a smaller pilot exhibition of the same name for the Arnhem Mode Biennale in 2013. The exhibition demonstrates a commitment to investigate and communicate contemporary ideas around dress, body, narrative and performance in ways which connect but go beyond traditional parameters of fashion or performance. It exposes artistic approaches that focus on bodily narrative, aesthetics, spatial concerns and process as performance where clothing and the wearer’s active engagement is integral to the development of a communication through contemporary moving image based works.

Understood through writings on performance and technology, interactive art, and embodiment this chapter explores how the ‘mediated experience’ of clothing and the body, curated through the exhibition has extended the experience for the viewer/ participant. Ultimately the curatorial approach sought to engage audiences on an experiential level through their own bodily knowledge, kinaesthetic, sensorial engagement and knowledge of wearing. The problems associated with exhibiting film, performance, dress and lived experience are discussed here through the research lead, curatorial approach, furthering an analysis of curating ‘dress film’ through performance based strategies and bodily knowledge of dress.

Key Words: fashion & performance, body and dress, dress film, research lead curation, embodiment, immersion.

NB: Published in French and english