Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Performative Processes: Björk's Creative Collaborations with the World of Fashion by Dirk Gindt

The presentation analyzed how Icelandic singer-songwriter and actress icon Björk uses dress as a creative medium to enhance her musical vision, visualize her patriotic politics as well as ally herself with performance art and further strengthen her position in the avant-garde. I devoted specific attention to her joining forces with the late British designer Alexander McQueen and British photographer Nick Knight and unpacked the implications of this creative collaboration, arguing that Björk strategically uses McQueen’s and Knight’s understanding of fashion as a performative process, that is, constantly in a state of becoming and transformation, in order to create her unique style that is characterized by the shifting and unstable identity of the Icelandic geographical body. In the second part of the presentation, I took Björk’s involvement with SHOWstudio as a starting point to reflect on some of the consequences when these visual and performative collaborations move into the realm of the digital. Meanwhile, the presentation has been developed into a refereed article that will be published in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture vol. 15, no. 4 (2011).

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