FASHION APERTURE UCHRONIA AND UTOPIAN FASHION IN FILM TEATRINO DI PALAZZO GRASSI

This three-day programme uses film to explore the concepts of utopia (idealised societies) and uchronia (alternate histories) in fashion, from the early 20th century to today. The programme enables us to look at fashion as more than just the history of design and style, and to understand its connection to profound questions of personal and social identity. Utopia and uchronia may seem highly specific, even technical, terms, but when we begin to think about them in relation to fashion today, through the medium of film, they reveal a surprisingly topical and relevant set of cultural concerns. Idealism, heritage, visionary imagery, otherworldliness, technology, fear, the posthuman, gender-fluidity and sustainability are just some of the many themes that will come to light over these three days. They are all ways to understand fashion in relation to the social and political spheres, and in a rapidly changing world of new communications, artificial intelligence, depleting resources and climate change, these are questions than the citizens of the future will have to think about. The programme is dedicated to exploring the relationship between fashion, cinema and art. Each day features one workshop for students and one evening public programme. The workshop is structured around a particular theme, alternating group discussion with curated sections of film on the topics listed below. The evening public programme hinges on the screening of highly iconic films that flash both backwards and forwards to the parallel dimensions of ucronic and utopian fashion.

20.02.2019 Fashion Utopias: modernism, ended stories where the past and the future are continuously rewritten AT 4 PM ideal bodies and the posthuman in the light of the present. Time and fiction become enmeshed in afternoon workshop (students) otherworldly scenarios that connect to future visions as much as to alternate histories of the past, to reveal fashion’s peculiar proclivity Utopia is an imagined place or state of affairs in which everything for time-travel. is perfect. First coined by the Renaissance humanist Sir Thomas This workshop looks at the following themes: More in 1516 to describe an imaginary island representing the perfect alternate history, heritage, brand identity, mixing times/temporal society, the literal meaning of utopia is ‘no place’. Utopian writers have layering, flashing back/flashing forward. frequently derided the luxury and excess of worldly fashion, seeking to put something more rational in its place. But more positive utopian AT 6.30 PM The Man Who Fell to Earth visions of dress came to the fore in the early 20th century avant garde, dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1976 including in film, alongside some darker, dystopian ones. At the heart of evening film screening (public) all utopian dress is the idea of inventing a form of clothing for the future, and the workshop looks at many entertaining and revealing visions of future fashions in the modernist and postmodern periods. For, as 22.02.2019 Fashion Futures and Future the British dress historian Aileen Ribiero writes: ‘It might […] seem a AT 3 PM Fashions: Activism, Otherworldliness fruitless exercise to look at imaginary clothing in non-existent societies. and the Carnivalesque But the history of dress is more than the mere sum of fabric and style; afternoon workshop (students) it is image, wish-fulfilment and fantasy’. This workshop looks at the following themes: With the partecipation of Serpica Naro modernist utopias / technological utopias, visions of the future, ideal bodies, robots and mechanical bodies, failed utopia / dystopia, the In this final workshop we revisit both concepts (utopia and uchronia) posthuman body. focusing on their progressive potential today and in the future. There is no reason that Utopian ideals should be seen in the past AT 6.30 PM L’Inhumaine alone. They are about imagining the future based on knowledge of dir. Marcel L’Herbier, 1924 the present, and the first part of this workshop brings the historical evening film screening (public) concepts explored in day 1 into the modern day and asks what future they have as realisable goals rather than fantastical dreams. It thus Live music by Mike Cooper looks at contemporary concerns with diverse issues in fashion, from gender fluidity to product sustainability, as part of a utopian impulse. Similarly, uchronic stories do not have to endorse the fashion system 21.02.2019 Fashion Uchronias: heritage, but can also critique it, as in the work of the fictional ‘designer’ AT 4 PM brand story-telling, and beyond Serpica Naro, which is in reality a cooperative of activists who afternoon workshop (students) foreground the precarity of the fashion industry. in the second part of the workshop, we will ask if fashion uchronias are inevitably about Uchronia (a modern word coined by the philosopher Charles Renouvier profit, or if there is a subversive alternative to the big fashion brands’ in mid-19th century) is also known as ‘alternate history’, and its writers advertising campaigns and marketing strategies, whereby fiction typically ask ‘what if?’ What would have happened if a particular could be mobilized for social and political change. From the politics of historical event had gone a different way? This fictional history, or LGBTQ+ identities to the ethics of fashion production, this workshop rewriting of the past, is exactly what the fashion industry often does investigates the future possibilities of fashion in a changing world, when it engages in heritage brand-building, marketing, promotion to ask if utopian dreams and uchronic stories offer real possibilities and trend-forecasting. We will look at a number of such narratives for a better world. that use film to creates fashion myths. Sometimes these are just This workshop looks at the following themes: romanticised fantasies of the past; but at other times they amount to the otherworldly, carnivalesque and gender fluidity, activism, a kind of creative fiction. The latter is especially true of fashion show anticapitalism, alternative ways of life, future visions. narratives, from the elaborate fantasies created by John Galliano for Christian Dior in the 1990s, to today’s ‘bonfires of the vanities’ created AT 6.30 PM Paris is Burning by luxury brands such as Chanel. The times and places invented by the dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990 fashion industry invite us to project ourselves elsewhere, in open- evening film screening (public)