Media Cultures 1Fashionable Communications

Week 7 – 1 September 2009

Tracey Meziane Benson

11 ways to think about ‘fashionable communications’:1. Fashion as a performance of an identity,

and/or as an expression of a fluid, changing embodiment of self:

‘[Fashion] is a shorthand way of signaling place and identity, as well as a way of performing social intercourse …’

Jennifer Craik (1994:9) on webct

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

2. The marketing of identity‘Life style’ marketing of fashion Via celebrities, fashion models and magalogs

Eg. Rivers, Katmandu catalogues

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

3. Fashion as clothing

‘… women wear their bodies through their clothes’

poet Blaise Cendars in Craik: 2 Through the clothing we wear, are made to

wear or choose to wear, we ‘wear our bodies’ – we represent ourselves through our bodies through the gestures we use and through the clothing and adornments we put on them.

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

4. My naked body – my true self? Or another palette for adornment? Body shaping is the most basic way in which

people ‘wear’ their bodies whilst still naked!

Through what we eat and don’t eat, muscle development …

And through life styles: eg. footballers, academics (slouched shoulders!), models…

and also who we live with and how – violence of one kind or another eg scars

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

5. The superficially decorated body: Hair styling Cosmetics Perfume Jewelry Body art

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

6. The altered body

‘Every body is marked by the history and specificity of its existence. It is possible to construct a biography, a history of the body, for each individual and social body.’

Elizabeth Grosz, 1994: 142 Examples: Tattooing Cosmetic surgery, Body piercings Insertions

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

Beatification or mutilation?

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Culture or aesthetics?

Lucky Rich – ‘the world’s most tattooed man’

“The world as we know it - the world dominated by homo sapiens - is quickly coming to an end. We may well be the last generation of "true humans" that live out natural lives, and I believe that it is essential that we embrace body modification in order not only to safely and positively prepare ourselves for transition into our next evolutionary step, but also to survive that step.”

(http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/lucky_rich/)

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Orlan is a performance artist who uses her own body and the procedures of plastic surgery to make "carnal art". She is transforming her face, but her aim is not to attain a commonly held standard of beauty.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Orlan cont…

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Stellarc

Mike Parr

7. How the discourse of gender imposes on fashion

Is it ‘unmanly’ to want to dress well?

‘Does my bottom look big in this?’

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

8. Accessories

Phones Bags Dogs

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

9. Fashion via cinema and television Styles of behaviour and interaction, clothing

and other commodities, lifestyle decisions.

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

10. Fashion via the net

‘Taste’ in music, art Website design Cinema Language

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

11. New media communication as fashion: Phones MSN Chat rooms On-line identities Games Email Graffiti and tagging (not only new media) Language - argot

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

References:

Austin, S (2005) 'Mike Parr and the discursive rupture: the condemned and punished body as a political strategy in Close the Concentration Camps', Double Dialogues- Anatomy and poetics Issue Six, Winter 2005 (http://www.doubledialogues.com/issue_six/austin.html)

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane