알렉산더 루스 교수: 비평적 패션 실천에서 사회적 맥락의 중요성

Alexander Ruth: The Importance of Social Context in Critical Fashion Practice

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What do you think are the characteristics of the Korean fashion system or interesting points related to fashion? (This could be related to the textile/sewing industry, the fashion industry, fashion education, fashion marketing, retail, or various processes surrounding fashion.) 

One of the major differences I have experienced in Korea, having worked in London and Paris before, is especially Seoul’s urban (city based) manufacturing ecosystem and infrastructure. With Dongdaemun market at the center surrounded by local manufacturing clusters, for example Changshin-dong. The existence of skilled mid and small-scale production companies creates opportunities for small design companies to source manufacture locally. The threshold of high unit numbers in terms of production, convenient low coast shipping logistics and flexible turnaround patterns makes it an exciting place for young designers. 

A reference to a particular critical fashion project in Korea 

Some years ago, the then RCA Fashion graduate Luke Stevens held a small exhibition in Changshin-dong as part of the “Project Seoul Apparel” 2017-18 UK/ Korea City Joint program. The project had a clear aim to understand, creatively process through practice, and communicate thoughts around the manufacturing area in Changsin-dong, working conditions within the area and human elements in the system. I think this may be of interest for in terms of critical practice in Korea and intonational collaboration in critical fashion practice in Korea. 

You mentioned about the incomparable difference between the West and Korea and might be difficult to bring the Western education system directly to Korea as it is. I could feel that you have a lot of concerns and interest in fashion education methods. It was especially impressive that you interacted with students a lot, so please introduce the characteristics and process of the fashion department class at Keimyung University. 

Firstly, I believe when talking about this subject one ought to clarify and distinguish between education models in order to create sustainable development in education and meaningful cultural exchange. Not only eastern and western models but with a deeper insight into education culture, the particular school, the teacher and the students. My insight to this is based on my experience as a student as well as an educator in the United Kingdom (Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design / London College of Fashion) and my experience of working at Kookmin University, Ewha University and Keimyung University here in Korea for the past 6 years. 

I am certain the direct application of one education model to the other is impossible. A direct import / export approach is not suitable for any long-term sustainable development in education. The reflection on this is still an ongoing process of adaptation, learning and reflection for me. 

Korea has been keen to recruit international talent in its steep and fast cultural and economic development. Fashion education is no exception in principle. However, I have not come across someone who is not native Korean, teaches in English and has worked in academia outside Korea before teaching and researching here. Therefore, my chance to participate dialogue and peer learning from similar experiences related to fashion education on this is limited.

My time here so far has taught me that, if not careful, one (myself included) either tend to culturally appropriate “western style fashion education” by looking only at the outcome of famous fashion schools with disregard of process and socio-cultural context, educational context and the individual teacher, individual student in which these outcomes were achieved. Or to the other extreme: being oblivious to the local (Korean) educational context, culture and the individual and only apply teaching methods that have been developed in specific education settings in western famous fashion schools, adding a certain superficial superiority to it. My experience here ranges from: “We want to be like Saint Martins or LCF here in Korea” to “This is not Saint Martins – you can’t teach like this here. I believe to achieve long term sustainable development it is about the integration into the educational environment, developing balanced progressive content and teaching methods and well as personal growth gained through diverse experience. 

Integration 

When teaching here in Korea, I would like to talk about the subject of “integration” into the educational environment in this context. It is about understanding different past experiences of others, learning about different cultural and education cultural contexts of the students, understanding hierarchies, and navigate through language barriers on either side. I believe meaningful sustainable integration does not mean full acceptance or complete change of one’s educational content, values and methods. I hope I am evolving as educator and with it, students evolve as learners and my colleagues evolve as fellow academics. This process is by no means free of friction. A very simple statement: It takes and needs time.

Here at Keimyung University

Without going to deep into education model and education institutional differences, for me there are very different restrictions and freedoms one must adhere to or can benefit from, comparing my past teaching experience outside Korea. I find the freedom to develop and deliver educational content, test new teaching methods and the support of my research very stimulating. Over the years we (the department) have somehow created a balance in the type of content, methods, and people we employ. As my professional network widens, we try to involve progressive young practitioners to develop new content and experiences. A development I am very pleased about.

Content and pedagogy

The content of my teaching here is based on my fairly diverse experience: Prêt-à-porter fashion, design for performance, (Fine) art practice and my experience in working towards a critical approach in fashion design from the work I did with the MA Fashion Futures and Susan Postlethwaite,

In all my classes I try to include “social context “, diverse cultural referencing (Korean and international) , and thoughts about the community into the curriculum, view design as a tool of narrative creation to foster dialogue and accessibility of design. 

Pedagogy 

I try creating new shared experience for students by including methods from both Korean and my international experienced education methods. I put an emphasis in a discursive and reflective learning environment to help my students in their development to become independent reflective learners, culturally aware learners who enjoy what they are doing. Lastly, when the language barrier seems impenetrable, I sometimes wish for full Korean proficiency from my side, but I have been thinking that my teaching methods have also expanded and perhaps individualized especially because of said barrier and the efforts to overcome it in creative ways beyond means of fluent language. 

Please introduce examples of fashion exhibitions related to critical fashion practices in Korea and abroad. In particular, as the Korean academies held many exhibitions, please share us major exhibitions. 

I don’t think I have come across an exhibition with a sole curatorial aim to bring together works and practitioners that mainly follow critical approach. But that does not mean it has not been done or does not exist.

There is clearly work being done in this direction by academics and practitioners and alike. In this case I would like to point out the work of the collective Peut-a-Porter and Alexa Pollamann, the work of a former student of mine Kat Thiel, and highly regarded researcher and educator Susan Postlethwaite. I also think the work of Professor Lucy Orta could provide interesting insight to your research. 

And, of course, I have many works of our talented students, who I believe are at the forefront of what could be considered critical fashion practice on undergraduate level here in Korea.

I would like to talk about an exhibition we did here at Keimyung University called Wearing Narratives. 

Exhibition “Wearing Narratives”, Photo Courtesy of Alexander Ruth

In this exhibition we showcased the work of our year 3 students from the class: “Artwear” (note: We have since changed the name of the class to “Experimental Fashion Practice”)

The brief of the project was to use clothing in the related sense (material and the body) as a tool for narrative creation. The narrative was up to the student, but it had to involve contemporary context or issue. The students dealt with issues from individual to community to worldwide scale. I think beside the subject content was the effort to communicate it to others in form of a story. This effort and thought imbedded in the design development could be of interest when discussing critical agendas within fashion design.

The works were shown in a static exhibition, but each student also had to have a performative outcome. I believe my academic and professional background tie into this. I come from prêt-à-porter Fashion but have furthered my studies and teaching and professional work in costume design for performance including LCF (experimental costume). Since then we have included briefs based on local tangible places and the local community for the students to reflect upon and create work that fosters dialogue on the issues of said places and members of the community. 

You mentioned that Korea’s Critical Fashion Practice is a different form from that of Europe, but it has existed since a long time ago. We also think it is important to conduct research and work on the Korean fashion system in Korea while conducting a research project. Please tell us about the examples and characteristics of the work of Critical Fashion Practice in Korea, and how it is different from Europe, and whether it has unique possibilities. 

I think Korea has a fairly unique infrastructure for practice based academic work in terms of fashion. I am not sure if it can be defined as critical, but it operates outside the commercial paradigm.

My experience is that there are a lot of exhibitions from academic societies that showcase mostly Korean academics practice-based work. This has been going on for the best part of 10 to 15 years to my knowledge, possibly longer.  It might be of interest, as it could be a comprehensive qualitative research source to understand the development of non-commercial fashion practice in Korea in a subject based and recent historical context. 

A new terminology (for me) 

The term fashion art, artwear or art fashion is a widely used in Korea, in practice as well as in education. I have not come across this terminology in Europe as much. It is in my opinion an ambiguous definition of both fashion and art. Nevertheless, I believe when conducting research into the field of fashion within a critical context in Korea that such exhibitions and within them selected works should be discussed. Examples are the Fashion Art Biennale, the work of the Korean Society of Fashion Design, And the Korean Fashion and Culture association. I think there is a gap between practice based academic work (academic societies and universities) and non-academically connected contemporary fashion practitioners that also operate outside the commercial paradigm. It would be great if your research could narrow this gap. I think it is a challenging task to approach academics or academic societies. Universities sometimes operate in rigid structures and hierarchies. Nevertheless, I hope I could be a somewhat of a link in this case. 

How does the academy define Critical Fashion? what are the risks or problems of dividing ‘Fashion’ and ‘Critical Fashion’?

I am not sure if I have come across a comprehensive and widely regarded definition of the subject as of yet. 

From my experience In Europe and the US, a critical approach to fashion (future orientation, sustainability, technology, government policy development etc.) are much more imbedded with in leading Universities research infrastructures (research groups, research institutes). I also see the establishment in education with courses such as Fashion Futures at LCF, Material Futures at CSM, Fashion and Society at Parsons and especially the work of the Royal College of Art in London and Goldsmiths in London. 

Here in Korea, to my knowledge, work in this direction moistly occurs on postgraduate level, I think. Very much on an individual student – supervisor basis rather than firmly imbedded in the curriculum. Here at Keimyung University I was involved in developing our undergraduate curriculum more towards a critical approach. The subjects I have developed are called Fashion for Society, which uses fashion design as a tool for the benefit of the community. In this case learn about design and sustainability, ethics in design and design for disability. The other subject is called Experimental Fashion Practice. Formally called Artwear, this is a subject where we look at fashion outside the commercial paradigm and find means to use material and the body to create narratives, a reflection of our surroundings and learn calculated risk taking and experimentation to explore the potential of media and impact of our work. We usually involve material, cultural, social, political and body agencies in this subject. 

When developing the subjects, we, like many others, face the challenge of defining and naming the new subjects. As defining involves naming at some point, ambiguous definitions such as Art-fashion, Artwear, Wearable Art or Fashion Art did not seem contemporary anymore. I feel the involvement of the word and notion art often marks the end of the definition road. I am pleased we made this progress. Moving on from Art Fashion…

what are the risks or problems of dividing ‘Fashion’ and ‘Critical Fashion’?

I am not sure if I fully understand this question. I believe clothing that has a commercial purpose and work that involves clothing in a non-commercial critical purpose are separate entities. I think there should be a clear differentiation when curating work or in the quest to define the practice. 

I think work involving fashion or clothes in subject or medium or display context can only be truly critical when they operate outside the immediate commercial framework of the fashion industry. 

Perhaps one could orientate oneself in a basic way on the subject of critical theory and its methods to examine, create work and define the field. Primarily the challenge of existing ideologies, power structures, common assumptions with the goal to work for the advancement (in some cases called liberation) of society. I believe if it involves in one way or another the exploitation of others it excludes critique of existing power structures by default. 

I would like to mention Balenciaga and Vetments in this case. I understand that these and other companies are reflecting upon contemporary issues, perhaps reflect on consumer culture, or fashion with their products, shows and advertising (I believe this is what you mean my meta critical using fashion strategies?) But crucially, with a clear capitalist agenda. I read an article (NY times) that talks about the “subject of the creative director being the human condition – on an epic pop culture scale” I thought this was quire adequate, not in the positive sense though.