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Medium (un)specificity as material agency – the productive indeterminacy of matter/material (Russian Translation)
Bristow, Maxine
Bristow, Maxine
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2023-06
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Abstract
In this article, I consider some of the debates brought to the fore by the proliferation of recent textile focused exhibitions; namely the tension between a continued allegiance to medium specific conventions and the richness, hybridity and heterogeneity afforded by the post-medium condition of contemporary art. Through a new body of sculptural and installational practice I propose a constellatory opening up of textile in which the medium specific can be (re)mapped in a fluid and fragmentary way. Drawing particular reference from Adorno’s conception of the constellation and mimetic comportment, this model of practice involves a mode of behaviour that actively opens up to alterity and returns authority to the affective indeterminacy of the sensuously bound experiential encounter. This is manifest through a range of practice strategies - “thingness”, “staged (dis)contiguity”, and the play between “sensuous immediacy and corporeal containment” - which mobilise a precarious relationship between processes of attachment and detachment. Acknowledging the critical currency afforded to textile through feminist and poststructuralist critique, the work moves away from “a rhetoric of negative opposition” and predetermined discursive frameworks, returning authority to the aesthetic impulse, privileging the ambiguous resonances of an abstract sculptural language over more overt strategies of representation.
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Bristow, M. (2023). Medium (un)specificity as material agency – the productive indeterminacy of matter/material [Russian Translation]. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress Body and Culture, 68(2), 264-283.
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New Literary Observer
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Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress Body and Culture
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ru
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This is a Russian translation of my journal article ‘Medium (Un)specificity as Material Agency-The Productive Indeterminacy of Matter/Material’ which was originally published by Taylor & Francis in Textile: Cloth and Culture on 22/03/2018, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14759756.2018.1432133
In April 2023 I was contacted by Liudmila Aliabieva the Russian editor of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress Body and Culture with a request to translate the above article. Published since 2006 (4 issues a year) the Russian journal of Fashion Theory is a partner with the English-language Fashion Theory and has an agreement with its publisher Taylor and Francis to translate papers from its journals on Fashion Theory, Fashion Practice, and Textile Culture. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress Body and Culture is the only journal in Russia with an academic approach to fashion and is unique in treating fashion as a cultural phenomenon. It is published by an independent non-state publisher that adopts a strong humanist position and believes in the importance of international cultural and academic exchange. My article is in a section of the journal entitled ‘Focus’. Whilst my own discipline is fine art rather than fashion, the article developed out of a paper presented at 'The Matter of Material' conference convened by Lesley Millar Professor of Textile Culture at the University for the Creative Arts. Hosted by Turner Contemporary in Margate in April 2017, the conference brought together academic researchers, makers, and curators to discuss the role of textiles in contemporary art practice. The conference was a parallel event to 'Entangled: Threads & Making' (28 Jan - 7 May 2017), a major exhibition of sculpture, installation, tapestry, textiles which included artists from different generations and cultures who challenge established categories of craft, design, and fine art, and who share a fascination with the handmade and the processes of making itself.
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