Fashion Now! Critical Thinking for Change Towards Bio-Digital Couture

From Firenze University Press Journal: Fashion Highlight

Maria Antonietta Sbordone, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

Reflection on the current content of Fashion especially when discussing the necessary revision of the processes that shape the supply of manufactured goods that circulate globally, and from whose circuits it seems unable to escape, imposes an attitude, a posture that investigates to unhinge certain assumptions. The result is a general flattening on questions that are certainly urgent, effects of indiscriminate but not definitive doing to which answers must be given, reformulating their assumptions.Questions about identity that unravels among so many belongings whose fluid nature is sometimes insubstantial; about individual and collective responsibility regarding the cognitive-technological surplus that is transformed into productive and consumer surplus; about the inability of autonomy from the circuits of the economy-world that neutralizes and flattens every difference and singularity; about the need to form and transfer knowledge between human and natural ecosystems. These, are some reflections arising within society and the market focused on the fashion system and its necessary change.Questions that, in parallel, call for another look that investigates beyond the systems, formulates an out of the box of immanent causes whose effects need to be answered and remedied: where and when did the dialogue between the design and creative culture of Fashion, and the intrinsic quality required for the necessary fulfillment of the need to dress break down (? ); how is the representation of the self realized today in the digital age and how are belongings made explicit (?); how do we recompose the relationship with the context that is not only social and cultural, but of the human immersed in the virtual dimension and, despite everything, at the opposite in the natural one (?); furthermore, bio-digital couture can constitute a fruitful ambivalence to access a new paradigm (?).Questions that arise within the critical reflection to contemporary society, to the forms of civilization that are explicated in as many forms of government, and of models of design and production inspired and guided by the lead to time productivity paradigm that pursues the creation of surplus value that is not distributable, not accessible and, at best, generator of inequalities, otherwise conflicts.The investigation of the multiplication and complexity of the socio-political-economic system, as we experience, implement and perceive it today, includes another dimension; from the more sensitive one, of experientialization that sets in motion emotional levers with a strong appeal to a different degree of perception of ourselves and the environment, to those, now widely tested, referable to the neutral acceptance of the countless challenges of daily living. It runs the obligation to equip ourselves with new tools of field investigation and speculative/imaginative observation in order to recover a margin of critical construct that places ever ahead in a plausible future, man’s ability to prefigure, to predict, to formulate worlds, to behave as a mystical futurologist or better yet a reliable prescientist about the fate of man on earth.From the side of reflection and critique of the current model of life and development, the heterodox narrative proposes new methods of indoctrination, understood as a profound reconnection of man to nature acting in the psychological sphere, representing new possible approaches.The human-nature relationship is widely described as diriment and headed for a sharp caesura (Beery et al., 2023), tells of the tearing of ties, the devastation of ecosystems, and the impoverishment of the ethno-zoo-botanical genetic heritage. The foreshadowed scenario outlines a scope for reflection on survival by reflecting, on the one hand, on the heralded disappearance of humans on earth, issuing a call for human persistence; on the other hand, on the role of restorative through tools for elaborating new thinking that requires an awareness that goes beyond data and statistics (Antonelli, 2019).The reaction to the current crisis takes various forms; repairing the lost human-nature link and identifying interventions requires an anthropological shift that brings the new approach of doing to purposes closer, foreseeing each and every effect (Van Gelder, 1996).On the other hand, the reliable prescientist bases his or her imaginative knowledge on premonition fueled by the imagination as an experienced futurologist; in psychology these are called “self-fulfilling prophecies” (Merton, 1971) and lead to finding and interpreting data so that our expectations are met, enabling us to act positively, to raise the level of awareness.The matrix of self-fulfilling prophecy responds to the identification of a purpose that motivates the achievement of a positive outcome (Heidegger, 2016), in this case with a strong emphasis on premonition of the effects that correspond to those causes.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-2266

Read Full Text: https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/fh/article/view/2266