Smart Fashion Under Subveillance

Between people and the environment, between inside and outside, not only the skin but also the clothing above it serves as an important protection and mediator. Fashion, in turn, represents the expansion of one's own identity and can be distinguished from the functional concept of clothing. On the one hand, fashion itself should be understood as a medium in its dimension that conveys meaning; on the other hand, fashion is a textile shell that, since its commercialization, has also been deeply intertwined with existing media technologies. The talk takes this ambivalence as a starting point and would like to look at fashion and its media implications and dependencies from three perspectives: Firstly, the surveillance character of smart fashion should be questioned. Secondly, fashionable case studies will be reflected from the perspective of sur/subveillance mechanisms and finally a collection with anti-surveillance efforts will be considered.

 

 

Silke Roesler-Keilholz is a research assistant at the Chair of Media Studies at the University of Regensburg. In her habilitation project (3rd book) with the working title “Rhizomatic Subveillance. SurveillanceArchitecture(s)”, she expands the spatial theoretical reflection of her dissertation “Doing City. New York in the field of tension between media practices” (published in 2010) by a topological dimension. Current fields of work include what she calls the theory of subveillance, aesthetics of postfeminism, spatial theories and fashion media studies.