Abstract
The Fashion Apparatus explores how Vilém Flusser’s understanding of the camera as an apparatus and the photograph as a technical-image, can be used as a lens through which to view the fashion industry and the production of fashioned-subjectivities. Flusser’s definition of the apparatus is closely mirrored by what is arguably the most central tool of fashion practice; the sewing machine, which is notably alluded to throughout his text. As both a product of culture and a machine that produces cultural forms, the sewing machine, like the camera, informs our understanding of the material world and of ourselves. Like the camera, the sewing machine is also a result of the industrial revolution, while simultaneously producing our current post-industrial era; in which images and information have taken the place of objects and of subjects. Building on these reflections on the apparatus within the context of fashion, and the expansive view of the apparatus discussed by Flusser, the paper then proposes that fashion-garments also operate as apparatuses and are in fact even more intimately entwined in the production of subjectivity than either the camera or the sewing-machine. This entwinement both makes the fashion-garment a more coercive apparatus, but also one which is more reliant on the wearer and thus more open to individualised forms of representation.
Presenters
Remie CibisPhD Researcher / Sessional Lecturer, School of Fashion & Textiles, RMIT University, Victoria, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Fashion, Dress, Apparel, Sewing-Machine, Representation, Image, Technical-Image, Photography, Tool, Apparatus
