Creative Process Journal: Curation and Maria Luisa Frisa

The Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language 1994 edition gives the following definition for curator:

1. the person in charge of a museum, art collection, etc.
2. a manager; overseer; superintendent.
3. a guardian of a minor, lunatic, or other incompetent, especially with regard to his property (354)."

When I first read this definition, my eyes focussed on the "lunatic",  and skipped over the words "guardian of...". I laughed, because there are times when I feel like I must be a lunatic or at least crazy to have taken on the massive project/job of editing the Ryerson Fashion Resource Collection, while also completing my graduate studies.

I am the "person in charge" of the collection, but this does not convey the essence of what curation means from a contemporary perspective. Nor does it convey the specific challenges of curating fashion.

To explore what it means to curate a fashion exhibition, I turned to a Fashion Theory article written in 2008 by curator Maria Luisa Frisa (who I met briefly in Milan at Fashion Tales 2012). In The Curator's Risk, Maria Luisa Frisa explores the idea that "fashion curating is the exercise of a critical gaze, which recognizes the multiple traces, symptoms and fragments that are around us" and identifies risks "as implicit to the working method of the curator" (171). The article is written in a reflective tone, and Frisa considers curation in general to be about "design, layout, imagining, and constructing" (172). She suggests that fashion curation allows one to "offer new points of observation" while cautioning that  it is necessary to understand "your own insights and being willing enough to take a gamble on them" (172).

Photo of Maria Luisa Frisa
Website: http://www.altaroma.it/luglio2008/Calendario_EN.asp?cmd=view&ID=3

Frisa suggests that an interdisciplinary perpective enriches her process and draws on her background in art history, her work as Director of the Fashion Design program at IUAV University Venice and as curator of the Pitti Discovery Foundation in Florence. She says she is "fascinated by the way in which a single garment, or a fashion photograph or a feature in a magazine can immediately relate us to the major themes of human consciousness, to dreams, obsessions, and all the implications of culture and society (173)."

Although she does not define specific steps to the creative process of curation, she suggests that curation involves an element of pattern recognition, piecing together fragments and clues "that will enable you to confirm a hunch, an idea, and to imagine a story" (173). Her starting point is typically "an obsession", which can take the form of an "image, on the edging of a garment, or on a word that starts like a slogan" (174). She says that her development of an exhibition often borrows "techniques derived from art or film, such as the Dadaist idea of the accumulation of heterogenous materials, or the technique of massing incongruent parts of an assemblage; or the montage of fragments, which may then be articulated in a linear way or collapsed into a dense mass" (174).

In her analysis of the exhibition called Excess: Fashion and the Underground in the '80s, which she co-curated with Stefano Tonchi, she outlines her desire to "create a sort of phantasmoagoria, formed from the recounting of lives lived to the utmost, recalling the memories of sudden deaths and young icons", which was intended to create a mixture "of blinding light and utter darkness" (174). She describes the site of the exhibition, the Leopolda Station, as a "gloomy industrial cavern", which was "lined with a series of containers painted black" with each container serving as "a box, a casket, and a theaterette" which served to convey a specific story (175-176).

Maria Luisa Frisa admits that she has not yet developed "a complete theoretical discourse as a curator" (177). She concludes that she "attempts to observe the unfolding of the time as both past and present together. A dimension that is unconcerned with the chronology of history, but determined by the way that fashion bends and guides the forms of time (177)".

In reading this article, I find myself relating to her reflections on the curatorial process and how fashion and time unfold. I like the idea of a story within container that Frisa used for Excess. For me, the curatorial process is a creative engagement with objects, a process of exploration that seeks to create links or find patterns that come together to form a narrative. Love it or hate it, a strong exhibition conveys a story or a point of view and is in the end thought provoking and that is what I want to achieve.

Within the Ryerson Fashion Resource Collection, there are an array of beautiful dresses and garments that could offer up an aesthetically pleasing display, but what really interests me is the idea that an object like a dress has a biography embodying the stories of the women who wore these dresses. Conveying the sense of who these women were and how their garments ended up in the collection will be a challenge since the records are minimal. Can I imagine a story? How do I convey the element of memory and my affinity for the dark and gloomy?

References:

Frisa, Maria Luisa. "The Curator's Risk". Fashion Theory, Volume 12, Issue 2, (2008): 171-180. Print.

Creative Process Journal: Memories of a Dress

Beginning the first page, post or sketch is the hardest part... and this post marks the beginning of my latest creative project: Memories of a Dress. If you have been a follower of this blog for a while, you might recall the series of photos about my mother's dresses called My Mother/Myself. 

In this series, I photographed dresses that belonged to my mother in the barren winter settings of a local ravine. The intent was to convey my sense of desolation and despair over my mother's decline in health and mobility from Parkinson's disease. I still have these dresses and am unable to part with them, even though they lack provenance or value, because they embody her memory.

Many women have dresses or other garments that hang at the back of their closets, long out of fashion, but imbued with memories of a person, an event or time in their life that they wish to remember (Banim and Guy 217). Disposing of that garment can be difficult, and museum curators and managers of study collections can be overwhelmed with requests to accept donations of wedding dresses, special occasion gowns and other items that have emotional significance to the wearer yet lack provenance or significance from a curatorial standpoint. In fact, I know this now firsthand since dealing with donation offers is part of my job as Collections Coordinator of the Fashion Research Collection at Ryerson University's School of Fashion.

“A single garment may be significant because of the relationship between its particular material form and the body that wears it” (Dant 86). Our clothing carries the imprints of our body, the marks and stains of living, and the rips, strains and tears of movement. Certain items of clothing, particularly ones worn for special occasions like a wedding, may be kept as a treasured memory of the event (de la Haye 14) or a loved one (Stallybrass 37). Such items can be difficult to part with, and the owner may seek to prolong the biography of the object by selling or giving the item away to validate their financial expenditure or emotional investment in the piece (Lucas 18). In becoming part of a museum or study collection, the social biography of the garment lives on beyond the life of the original owner.

The Ryerson Fashion Research Collection, which was founded in 1981,  is a repository of several thousand items acquired by donation, many of which are dresses and evening gowns dating from 1860 to 1990. The goal will be to identify, research, document and create a narrative that links selected dresses from the collection as a photo-based curatorial project called “Memories of a Dress”.

This creative process journal will serve as a documentation of my curatorial process and research journey. Over the course of the next several months, I will share my thought processes, trials and tribulations, sketches, and test photos. Bill Gillham and Helen McGilp have suggested that this type of creative activity "applies in all domains of academic study but is often not reported", and is "fundamental to the kind of arts research which allocates practice a central role" (177).

Although I have used the creative process journal twice before (in fall 2011 for the project Marie Antoinette Slept Here and in winter 2012 for The Uncanny), this time it feels like the stakes are bigger. I am nervous about sharing information related to my job, and not sure how to address that. But here I go!

References:

Banim, Maura, and Ali Guy. "Dis/continued Selves: Why do Women Keep Clothes they no Longer Wear?" Through the Wardrobe: Women's Relationships with their Clothes. Eds. Alison Guy, Maura Banim, and Eileen Green. New York: Berg, 2001. 203-219. Print.

Dant, Tim. Material Culture in the Social World. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. Print.

De La Haye, Amy. A Family of Fashion: The Messels: Six Generations of Dress. Eds. Lou Taylor and Eleanor Thompson. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2005. Print.

Gillham, Bill, and Helen McGilp. "Recording the Creative Process: An Empirical Basis for Practice-Integrated Research in the Arts". International Journal of Art & Design Education. 26.2 (2007): 177-184.

Lucas, Gavin. "Disposability and Disposession in the Twentieth Century." Journal of Material Culture 5.4 (2002): 1-22. Print.

Stallybrass, Peter. "Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning and the Life of Things." The Yale Review 81.2 (1993): 35-50. Print.

An Insight into Fashion Week

Fashion shows first made their appearance in the early 1900's, and now over 1000 years on, a prolonged event named 'Fashion Week' takes place across the world two times a year. The event is proven to be more dominant within the fashion capitals of the world: London, New York, Paris and Milan. This designated week is a crucial and stressful week for all clothing designers as it is their chance to showcase their latest seasonal collections to the press and to their public buyers.

The catwalk shows are a chance to show off their stunning new garments and hope for a huge reaction off the audience. Whilst some designs are future forward and over the top, they are unlikely to be worn by our modern-day public. This is where the high street comes in. High street stores often take a look at runway trends and create either carbon copies of a trend or tone them down to make them more buyer-friendly. They use the catwalk shows as inspiration and take into consideration what their customers would like to wear on a daily basis in a hope to make a big profit, although, many people prefer designer brand wear due to the high quality, intricate detailing and for the brand name alone. This means they do not mind paying extra money for something that is going to last a lifetime.

The audience is usually scattered with journalists, buyers and a whole bunch of 'A list' celebrities that gather and sit on the front row. Celebrities are the most common people to purchase and wear these designer creations as they can afford to buy numerous garments to wear to other press events. This helps to further promote the specific brands among the rest of the world thus deserving a seat at the front of the runway show for observation. Celebrities wearing these branded garments may attend a wide range of events that differentiate by audience, for example musicians, actors and socialites. Being among varied audiences will draw in a large amount of potential buyers as they get photographed by the press for a variety of magazines.

With fashion week still going strong and proving to be increasing popular worldwide, it seems the 4 fashion capitals will always be the homes of fashion as they bring in a whole host of leading designers and A list celebrities resulting in these shows being the biggest and best in the world.