BRIEF:
Could you please, bring an item from your own belongings which you consider as the most tasteless object that you own?
TODAY’S STRUCTURE:
- Introduction and context around the brief
- What learning is involved when looking at objects?
- What is the aim of all this?
- Learning outcome
- Showing my tasteless objects
- Inviting peers to show their tasteless objects
- Looking at language we use daily as an art/design tutor: What phrases in connection to taste do you use when teaching?
- Vote for the most tasteless object (only if we have enough tasteless objects)
FRAMEWORK
- First PgCert session – comment by peer: “How do I ignore my own aesthetic when teaching?”
- My boss: “This is not my taste, but it is good work…”
- Us (not that long ago): “Don’t make it too ‘ethnicky’ looking” – taste constitutes a judgement and can mean racial discrimination
- And then there was my interview when applying for the MA Fashion at CSM in 1998 – former head: Louise Wilson: “You look boring…”
- Text by Judith Clark 2013
- Barbican exhibition: The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined: Oct 2016 – Feb 2017 curated by Judith Clark and Adam Phillips
Book: Anna-Nicole Ziesche: Conditioned by Dress – The Relationship between Mind, Fashion, Film and Performance. Edited by Lucy Orta 2013
Remembered, Felt, Imagined Forever
Project Brief:
“Please describe your experience with a specific garment/s, which have stayed in your memory.
It may be an imaginary garment, such as a garment you envisioned yourself to be dressed in but never dared, or were even permitted to wear.
Please depict the garment in great detail and elaborate on how it affected you psychologically and physically.
The length and style of the text is open.
Thank you”
Anna-Nicole Ziesche, 2012
Response to brief by Judith Clark 2013
For the project ‘Remembered, Felt, Imagined Forever’
“Short-suit
It was almost exactly 30 years ago in Rome.
It was yellow all-in-one cotton short-suit. A kind of romper suit that was neither childlike nor adult like, but hovered somewhere in between. It was what one would call if they used that kind of language, distasteful.
It had an impractical and unflattering white collar. I cannot remember whether it had coy flowers printed on it – but it had some kind of small decorative print all over it.
I was bought clothes relatively rarely by my mother so I was used to the experience of being refused something I desired. The thing that stays in my mind about this was my dismay at not being able to convince my mother to buy this for me, and the unusual ferocity of my momentary desire for it. Desire that I was well trained to repress.
I remember the feeling vividly and I remember it becoming a family joke that I could have been so momentarily attached to something so inconsistent with other things I loved, with things that were considered tasteful. So it was like a breach of that taste. It was easy to justify why I was not bought this object, but that only made the experience worse. “
Judith Clark 2013
Judith Clark: “It is, however, surprisingly diverse in its references when you look at the use of the word ‘vulgar’ over time: the common or the popular, the vernacular, or associated with imitation – all are included in fashion.”
WHAT LEARNING IS INVOLVED WHEN LOOKING AT OBJECTS (objects in a wide sense)?
This list is extracted from the book Object-Based Learning and Well-Being: Exploring Material Connections, edited by Thomas Kador, and Helen Chatterjee, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020 and translated into my own words:
- Learners learn and reflect actively: we are looking actively at a physical object which we sourced actively.
- Learners learn somatically: we are exploring the object physically and psychologically because it is a physical object as opposed to a digital image or text so many more senses are involved.
- Learners learn emotionally/through emotions: touching the object can create an emotion; memories prompted by the object can create an emotion and importantly exploring one’s own taste can be revealing and therefore, emotional, too.
- Learners construct their knowledge based on their own experience: we are looking at our own objects and therefore, own experiences and memories with those objects.
WHAT IS THE AIM OF ALL THIS?
Coming back to my peer’s question: “how do we ignore our own aesthetic when teaching?”
I intend to demonstrate with this exercise that understanding our own taste and its origin better and being more aware of those internal processes is vital to understand other people’s taste better and significantly be able to ‘park our own taste’ when teaching.
In fact, only by being aware of the social, cultural and physical relationships existing in one’s own environment, can people aim to become aware of their own choices and ideas in the future (De Vecchis, 2011). Book Object-Based Learning and Well-Being: Exploring Material Connections, edited by Thomas Kador, and Helen Chatterjee, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020
- LO1: Critically evaluate your approach to assessing your own aesthetic/taste using object-based learning and self-reflective frameworks. [Process]
YOUR TASTELESS OBJECTS
1. Why do you think the object is tasteless?
2. Why did you keep the object?
3.What would you change about the object to make it tasteful?
4. Do you remember a particular point in your life when you developed a particular awareness of taste?
MY TASTELESS OBJECTS