Expanded Semantic Levels in Fashion – Opportunities for a performative interconnection between an individual immersive experience and fashion
Harm Coordes | Expanded Semantic Levels in Fashion – Opportunities for a performative interconnection between an individual immersive experience and fashion | University of the Arts Bremen (Department of Design), University of Groningen (Department of Art History and Material Culture) | Promotor(es); supervisor(s): Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick, Prof. Dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann | 12/2020-12/2024 | hcoordes[at]hfk-bremen.de
How can fashion as a symbol of fast consumption and superficiality be used to create ecological awareness? And how can it take part in a process of transformation towards a more sustainable future?
Based on exemplary case studies that are investigating ways of interlinking academic ideas with artistic and performative experiences, the artistic PhD project uses fashion as a tool and interface to generate a sustainable consumption model. This is developed in the context of the fashion project ‘CHURCH OF THE HAND’ (COTH), which creates immersive rooms of experience between fashion, installation, sound, taste, haptics and performance.
On an epistemological level, the research illustrates how different theories and observations regarding the presentation of fashion are intertwined and fortify or complement each other in order to create an individual experience. Through the conjunction of theories on branding, marketing, and consumer criticism, with those that emphasize the importance of being present – such as theories on the construction of atmosphere, on the possibilities of social engagement in the arts, and on the transformative power of narratives – preconditions for a transformation towards a more critical consumer behavior and ways to interconnect individual meanings with fashion will be formulated. On an artistic level, it will do this through situations of individual reflection (of one’s own habits) and artistic encounters with physical (fashion)-artefacts. The underlying premise for the thesis is that a change in consumer behavior must ultimately go hand in hand with a change in perceptual behavior, in which active participation replaces unconscious consumption.