Archaeology of Fashion Film
From September 2017 Central Saint Martins/University of the Arts London will team up with Winchester School of Art/University of Southampton on a two-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Entitled Archaeology of Fashion Film, the project will run between 1 September 2017 and 31 August 2019 and will be led by fashion historian and theorist Caroline Evans as Principal Investigator, media scholar Jussi Parikka and art historian Marketa Uhlirova as Co-investigators.
About the project:
In an era witnessing a rapid proliferation of the digital moving image across commerce and culture, this research project is the first to investigate the hidden history of fashion film, going back to the beginnings of cinema. It asks what legacy this new history may have for the rapidly changing field of fashion communications today.
Emphasising the transformative effects of film on fashion, the project forges a new understanding of film as a 'fashion medium' and as a 'fashion object'. It will make a major contribution to scholarly studies of the history of fashion, of film, and of fashion film, and will change how contemporary fashion filmmakers and other media practitioners understand the history of their discipline and the media cultural context for their own creative and commercial work.
Positing fashion film as a unique hybrid of two industries with distinct practices, resources, and motivations, the project’s interdisciplinary approach provides a new historical and theoretical framework for understanding this important and increasingly popular phenomenon. To that end, the project brings together scholars with combined expertise in film history, fashion history and media studies, and practitioners involved in various aspects of contemporary fashion film production.
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Project partners include: British Film Institute, Somerset House, Moravská galerie, AnOther magazine and British Fashion Council.