Fashion and the Moving Image: EUscreen’s online fashion exhibition
EUscreen, the online portal to Europe’s television history, recently launched a range of online exhibitions, among which a fashion and trends exhibition. To find out more, Europeana Fashion spoke Dr. Dana Mustata who worked on the fashion and trends exhibition on EUscreen. Dana holds a PhD from Utrecht University in the history of Romanian television and is currently teaching at the Center for Journalism and Media Studies at Groningen University. Besides being an expert on media, Dana love fashion. So it was only natural she co-curated EUscreen’s online fashion exhibition.
This interview is an excerpt. You can download the full interview with many links to EUscreen material here:
EF: What does EUscreen have to offer in terms of fashion?
DM: If one searches for fashion on the EUscreen portal, they will find 1451 items from 21 different countries spread across Europe. This includes videos, photographs and a more recently launched virtual exhibition. Items date back to the 1920s and 1930s until the present day.
EF: Nowadays, many designers decide to stream their fashion shows live online and initiatives like SHOWstudio publish fashion film online. Are these initiatives part of the evolution of fashion and the moving image?
DM: The relation between television and fashion is now exploring new directions, and those very much reflect changes in the television industry. Look at Fashion TV, for instance. It started in 1997 at a time when niche channels were spreading and when audiences could choose content according to their very specific interests. Nowadays, Fashion TV presents a lot of its broadcast content on their own website. Fashion will still be present on television, primarily because it is very much part of our social life, culture and history which television constantly records. But broadcast content on fashion will proliferate to new platforms: to the online environment or the mobile phone.
EF: What do you foresee in the future for fashion and television?
DM: Fashion will still be present on television in the same ways in which it has been present until now, but changes in television technology could add new dimensions to audiovisual presentations of fashion. The switch to high definition television, to big screens or even to 3D image will enhance viewers’ experience of fashion on television. On the other hand, the spread of broadcast content in the online environment will offer new distribution outlets for fashion as well as new interactive ways of connecting to consumers, fans, fashionistas or just the casual fashion curious.
A photograph often makes a statement and fashion photographs in particular, often illustrate an attitude or a state of mind. The moving image on the other hand organizes different shots into a narrative.
EF: Is there a difference between fashion in a still image and fashion in the moving image?
DM: First of all, there are aesthetic differences: audiovisual images are about movement, which enhances the presentation of something as visual as fashion. The audiovisual image also works with space, sequencing and points of view, which delivers an enhanced mode of presentation. Not to mention that the moving image adds a new sensorial experience to the still image: the experience of sound. The two types of content also differ in how they convey meaning: a photograph often makes a statement and fashion photographs in particular, often illustrate an attitude or a state of mind. The moving image, on the other hand, organizes different shots into a narrative.
EF: Are you planning on any future fashion exhibitions on EUscreen?
DM: The recently launched EUscreen exhibition on fashion showcases just a mere fraction of all the items on this topic, which the portal has to offer. The aim of this exhibition is to show users how audiovisual material on fashion can be used to tell a story about fashion. Therefore, we invite people interested in fashion to explore the EUscreen material on this topic and make their own exhibitions, using the exhibition-making tools developed in EUscreen, which will become available to the user by the end of September.
I’m pretty excited about launching the flipped educator spotlight video series and included a link to that here https://samedaypaper.org/ as well, along with plenty of other info, resources, etc