Can fashion exist anywhere?
This will be a key question when a group of researchers, academics and practitioners gather for a symposium in Oslo to discuss whether smaller fashion ecosystems can exist beyond fashion capitals. The event is being run by two artistic forces in Oslo.
With Norway’s new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design up and running and the International Fashion Research Library preparing for an official opening at the end of November, the two cultural institutions are working together on different fronts.
In step with this, the symposium on “Decentralization of Fashion” will be held on Friday and Saturday. The 2022 Fashion Research Symposium will encompass fashion research, knowledge sharing and critical discourse. It derives from the research project “Norwegian Fashion; Cultural Production and Aesthetic Mediation Practices” by Synne Skjulstad, associate professor of Hoyskolen Kristiania.
In honor of the opening of the new National Museum last June, it is putting a sharper focus on contemporary fashion, as evidenced by the appointment of Hanne Eide as curator of contemporary fashion. At nearly 54,000 square meters, the avant-garde museum in Oslo is capturing the design mind as much for its 400,000-plus objects as for its monumental architecture by Kleihues + Schuwerk. The International Fashion Research Museum and Library is located on Oslo’s waterfront near the Nobel Peace Center. The two cultural centers formed an institutional partnership some time ago to strengthen a shared mission “to put Norway on the map of contemporary fashion studies,” according to an email from Elise By Olsen, director of the International Fashion Library. Research.
All 170 countries have already been addressed at the free symposium, which is intended for students, industry professionals, fashion enthusiasts and others. Authorities such as Kaat Debo, director of MoMu Antwerp; Ida Falck Oien, associate professor at the Oslo Academy of Arts; Veronique Pouillard, professor of modern international history at the University of Oslo, and Jeppe Ugelvig, curator, critic and theorist and editor-in-chief of the Viscose Journal, will speak.
Artistic autonomy, professional identity and the concept of fashion in wider fashion cultures and the industry at large will be examined, as well as how they are intertwined. The symposium will highlight artistic merit as a key force, particularly in relation to the centralized economic power held in the fashion industry. Attendees will ponder questions such as whether countries outside fashion capitals can be central to artistic and creative development.
In accordance with this
