Papers by Edith Lázar
Out of Stock, 2020
Introduction to the edited issue of Out of Stock - an artistic-research project that poses as a f... more Introduction to the edited issue of Out of Stock - an artistic-research project that poses as a fashion and design journal. The first and only issue addressed ‘scarcity and shortages’ as tools for reframing the everyday and for finding empowering imaginaries of future(s) ways of living when an indefinite, dreary present seems to have taken over ideas of what is to come. Steaming from eastern-european sensibilities.
ENTKUNSTUNG yearbook III, 2019
(ENTKUNSTUNG 09 Fetishism)
Exploring the skin as an 'alien' matter, the paper makes a swift route... more (ENTKUNSTUNG 09 Fetishism)
Exploring the skin as an 'alien' matter, the paper makes a swift route through the double fetishism/ fashion in order to address our recent obsession with skin complexion and re-think skin as a border that consistently refuses to stay in place.
Studia Philosophia UBB, 2017
In this article, we discuss the potential of wearable structures to provide effective social comm... more In this article, we discuss the potential of wearable structures to provide effective social commentaries and address the political representation of refugees, migrants, and nomads. We take Lucy Orta’s Refuge Wear as an occasion to address a series of socio-political considerations around wearables, textiles, communication, and technology, as well as the role of urban and social environments in determining architectures of mobility. Finally, we provide a critique of framing concepts such as relational aesthetics, heterotopias, nomadology, or deterritorialization—to propose a rethinking of wearables based on the idea of critical habitats and responsible resource-based philosophies.
Keywords: wearables, Lucy Orta, relational aesthetics, mobility, nomadology
Revolutions. The Archeology of Change, 2017
Commonly perceived as the first authentic avant-garde, Italian Futurism aimed to transform everyd... more Commonly perceived as the first authentic avant-garde, Italian Futurism aimed to transform everyday experiences and the life of common people. Fashion played an important role in their design for a dynamic modern lifestyle. Inspired by Jacques Rancière’s idea that rearrangements in our structures of perception account for previously unaccountable forms of rendering subjects visible, I argue that fashion, like art and politics, creates “fictions”. In its close connection to the body and the notion of identity, fashion has revealed the body as a battleground for representations and political imaginings of social orders. The Futurists’ interest in fashion raises questions on how bodies were addressed, to what social climate they responded to, and how were these presumably artistic creations received by the larger audiences. I point out the openings that can be addressed in thinking the historical intersections of art and social change, reflecting on their imbrications today.
Keywords: Italian Futurism, imagining changes, fashion, aesthetic politics, Jacques Rancière
EKPHRASIS, 2/2014 BODIES INBETWEEN
One of the difficulties when engaging a topic referring to the relationship between fashion and t... more One of the difficulties when engaging a topic referring to the relationship between fashion and the body is portrayed by both the plethora of images provided by the fashion industry and the numerous imbrications these images pose throughout digital media. Circulated throughout various media, images establish interconnected relationships extending beyond the urban space, body materiality, or the interplay of habits and representations. Even though they configure a body that moves away from conventions ruling the actual lived body in urban spaces, these images are a moulding force for individuals. As the relationship between fashion and the digital exceeds the physical boundaries and formulates different perceptions over clothing and the body, the concept of fashion is seen here from a perspective within the arts as opposed to the cultural industries. The present article considers the body as the interface of sign perpetuations, aesthetic effects and stylistic transformations. In discussing these issues, however, I do not rely solely on a semiotic analysis of images, but focus on an interdisciplinary approach at the nexus of fashion and media studies. The article focuses on body as reflected in digital and artistic practices, Internet iconography, and clandestine forms of body image representations.
Essay by Edith Lázar
Schloss-Post, 2019
In an economic system that revolves around producing and consuming, growing awareness about the i... more In an economic system that revolves around producing and consuming, growing awareness about the issues that accompany such a system of accumulation, and finding sustainable and alternatives forms for counteracting becomes something like an imperative. But what happens when alternative practices, like repurposing or secondhand , are less a choice than the norm in everyday life? How are we to reconsider fashion practices in relations to different social backgrounds? Edith Lázár approaches the Romanian fashion context through autobiographical notes, lived or invented, and reflects on »fictions«seen not as an »untrue«but as possible rearrangements fashion can operate to question and create narratives that stretch the past into the present, but also open a discussion about possible futures.
In a scene from the 1995 pop culture movie Clueless, Alicia Silverstone's character is doubtful o... more In a scene from the 1995 pop culture movie Clueless, Alicia Silverstone's character is doubtful of how to dress and picks her clothes using a computerised program that allows her to sort out and match various garments in a virtual dressing room. By exploring ways to combine them, Cher not only creates a style for her persona, but also commits herself to how technology and media shape fashion in the everyday. Some years earlier, in the 1989 sequel Back to the Future II, Michael J. Fox's character Marty travels to the future and arrives in 2015. The technological and socio-cultural changes that would occur today, as pictured in the movie, are defined by the ubiquity of cameras and TVs, unmanned drones and video chat systems, video game systems, head-mounted displays, 3D and wearable technology. Marty's shoes with automatic shoelaces, a similar version of which Nike would release in 2008 as Hyperdunk Supreme -is but an example of how technological fictions as presented in films infiltrate and redefine the everyday. Like the self-lacing shoes, clothes that can adjust to fit the body are a type of reactive clothing that describes our evolving interaction with technology in everyday life and the enhancement of the human body.
Book Reviews by Edith Lázar
Published by Sternberg Press, the 14th thematic volume of studies from the Academy of Fine Arts ... more Published by Sternberg Press, the 14th thematic volume of studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Aesthetic Politics in Fashion comprises a series of fresh academic writings elaborated around applied examples. The corpus of texts calls upon fashion's dangerous liaisons: art, the body-gender-differentiation triad, techniques of display/presentation and image inquiries, which are passed through fashion's weighty economical character along with the working industry issues.
Published by Gestalten, and curated by the mixed media duo artists Cooper & Gorfer, The Weather D... more Published by Gestalten, and curated by the mixed media duo artists Cooper & Gorfer, The Weather Diaries retraces the influence of cloth-making over identity and does so through the lens of the soft emotional appropriations that local fashion is building nowadays. At the same time, it presents works wrapped around the natural and structural beauty of the western Nordic Islands region, infused with a strange charisma and a mark of tempestuous weather. On this line, the material, the actual fabric of the clothing, stands out as an aspect of utterly great importance in the process of reclaiming identity. Firstly, it traces a connection between manufacture, art, design, and performance in what has come to be the fashion world, and then signals how dressing up the body also comprises aspects of the relationship between practice, aesthetics, ritual, and the magic spark that clothing holds so dearly. (online link)
Moving through an array of visuals and innuendos, the works Lidewij Edelkoort has gathered and cu... more Moving through an array of visuals and innuendos, the works Lidewij Edelkoort has gathered and curated are in fact a mediation platform for the complex transgressions individuals are making from their bodies to the objects they long for and vice versa. (online link)
Interviews and Art Reviews by Edith Lázar
Schloss - Post, 2020
Edith in den Fashion-Städten is a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibitions and events, w... more Edith in den Fashion-Städten is a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibitions and events, written by a confused traveler trying to make sense of these hazy everyday encounters and the politics of the body accompanying them.
The final installment in the series is all about a Young Boy Dancing Group performance that took place as part of Schinkel Pavillion’s program Disappearing Berlin. Next to the riverbank amid piles of sand, Lázár depicts traces of the 2000s fashion rave scene and senses a scenography of a dystopian world, while the performance reveals a potentiality of »queering« the body, a way of thinking sideways by unravelling pleasure and desires. Listen to a special playlist on Soundcloud accompanying the text.
Schloss - Post , 2019
Edith in den Fashion-Städten is a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibitions and events, w... more Edith in den Fashion-Städten is a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibitions and events, written by a confused traveler trying to make sense of these hazy everyday encounters and the politics of the body accompanying them. recounted a trip to the archive of Ulm's School of Design, while brought our writer to the Helmut Lang archive in Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts and Elfie Semotan's show Contradiction at C/O Berlin. Lázár's third encounter recalls questions around fashion imageries and archives, and how they »shape and reshape collective visual memories, for they operate with representations of class, gender, race and the body.« This she observes closely while visiting the exhibition The Black Image Corporation by Theaster Gates at the Gropius-Bau Berlin this spring.
Schloss - Post , 2019
Edith in den Fashion-Städten is nothing more than a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibit... more Edith in den Fashion-Städten is nothing more than a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibitions and events written by a confused traveller trying to make sense of these hazy everyday encounters and the politics of the body accompanying them. The first installment in the series recounted a trip to the archive of Ulm’s School of Design, while the second journey brought our writer to the capital cities of Vienna and Berlin. Permanently on view, the Helmut Lang archive in Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts inspired Edith to rethink body politics in the light of transparent materials and male gazes, while photographer Elfie Semotan’s show Contradiction at C/O Berlin continues her lines of inquiry on the eroticized gazes and desire in fashion. Accompanying the text, Lázár has created the playlist Transparencies on SoundCloud.
Schloss - Post, 2019
Fashion and design: one is seen as flimsy, the other as beautifully useful objects. Yet here are ... more Fashion and design: one is seen as flimsy, the other as beautifully useful objects. Yet here are both disciplines, dressing our everyday life. From use to abuse, in funny ways or more painful ones: when sequins leave marks on the skin, or a door handle falls out, we realize how close our encounters with fashion and design are. Edith in den Fashion-Städten is nothing more than a series of travel notes and reviews on exhibitions and events done by a confused traveler trying to make sense of these hazy everyday encounters and the politics of the body accompanying them. The first of the series recounts a trip to the city of Ulm during spring, to the HfG Archive, namely Ulm's School of Design, which in the 1950s and 1960s brought together work and life on its campus, while approaching design and environmental design. The exhibition the Archive hosted, Nicht mein Ding, addressed the issue of gender in design and was a good starting point for a discussion on how gender gets to be represented, but also some of the difficulties arising within the process.
The Little Models is a series of digital photographic works by French artist TTY. The series comp... more The Little Models is a series of digital photographic works by French artist TTY. The series comprises stances of virtual bodies in 3D format.
Text by Edith Lázár
https://anti-utopias.com/art/tty-the-little-models/
Fashion photography has often blurred the line between fashion and art due to its ability to enga... more Fashion photography has often blurred the line between fashion and art due to its ability to engage the body with intertextual references tackling upon other socio-cultural discourses. These hybrid junctions question as well as underline imbrications of arts in fashion and viceversa, understood as a more and more symbiotic relationship. The artist photographer Mustafa Sabbagh finds fashion as a medium of inquiry, but with a practice that taps into classical photography or art history seen through a conceptual lens.
Edited Issues by Edith Lázar
Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, vol. 12, issue 2 (2014)
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Papers by Edith Lázar
Exploring the skin as an 'alien' matter, the paper makes a swift route through the double fetishism/ fashion in order to address our recent obsession with skin complexion and re-think skin as a border that consistently refuses to stay in place.
Keywords: wearables, Lucy Orta, relational aesthetics, mobility, nomadology
Keywords: Italian Futurism, imagining changes, fashion, aesthetic politics, Jacques Rancière
Essay by Edith Lázar
Book Reviews by Edith Lázar
Interviews and Art Reviews by Edith Lázar
The final installment in the series is all about a Young Boy Dancing Group performance that took place as part of Schinkel Pavillion’s program Disappearing Berlin. Next to the riverbank amid piles of sand, Lázár depicts traces of the 2000s fashion rave scene and senses a scenography of a dystopian world, while the performance reveals a potentiality of »queering« the body, a way of thinking sideways by unravelling pleasure and desires. Listen to a special playlist on Soundcloud accompanying the text.
Text by Edith Lázár
https://anti-utopias.com/art/tty-the-little-models/
Edited Issues by Edith Lázar