China and the ‘Cosmotechnics’ of Fashion

2021 M+ / Design Trust Research Fellows Anouchka van Driel, a Beijing-based curator and researcher, studies China and the ‘cosmotechnics’ of fashion. Fashion globally manifests itself as a visual language and culture, as well as a social practice, constantly redefined and reshaped through social interactions. Technology, as in all aspects of contemporary living, has an increased impact on the social realm, especially in today’s China and its fashion landscape. Deploying techno-philosopher Yuk Hui’s concept of ‘cosmotechnics’ as a lens to frame recent developments in the fashion sector in China, van Driel’s research investigates the changing dynamics between designers and users/consumers through the highly mediated relationships of online platforms, and their impact on the design, creation, marketing, and consumption of garments and clothing, including the surrounding social ephemera of style. Moreover, the research explores the enormous impact on the fashion industry of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated and accelerated changes already in motion, effecting a new form of de-globalised production.

2021 M+ / Design Trust Research Fellows Anouchka van Driel, a Beijing-based curator and researcher, studies China and the ‘cosmotechnics’ of fashion. Fashion globally manifests itself as a visual language and culture, as well as a social practice, constantly redefined and reshaped through social interactions. Technology, as in all aspects of contemporary living, has an increased impact on the social realm, especially in today’s China and its fashion landscape. Deploying techno-philosopher Yuk Hui’s concept of ‘cosmotechnics’ as a lens to frame recent developments in the fashion sector in China, van Driel’s research investigates the changing dynamics between designers and users/consumers through the highly mediated relationships of online platforms, and their impact on the design, creation, marketing, and consumption of garments and clothing, including the surrounding social ephemera of style. Moreover, the research explores the enormous impact on the fashion industry of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated and accelerated changes already in motion, effecting a new form of de-globalised production.

The M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship programme consists of two separate fellowships investigating issues related to architecture and design. One supports research projects focused on Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area in an Asian or global context, and the second supports research projects related to Asia more broadly, closely in line with the curatorial position of M+, the Hong Kong museum dedicated to visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Past fellows include: Ling Fan (2015); Joseph Grima (2016); the team of Daniel Cooper and Juliana Kei (2016); Thomas Daniell (2017); Hugh Davies (2018); the team of Fan Lok Yi and Sampson Wong (2018); Yasmin Tri Aryani (2019) and Oliver Elser (2019); Farzin Lotfi-Jam and Mark Wasiuta (2020); Jason Lau (2020).

More details about M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship here

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2021
Fellow: Anouchka van Driel

Anouchka van Driel is a curator, researcher, and innovation lead based in Beijing. She has been active in China’s creative sector for over a decade, collaborating with cultural organisations on curatorial projects. Van Driel also runs People’s Works, a platform for social innovation as part of the architecture studio People’s Architecture Office. Her research and curatorial projects focus on the social effects and implications of design across the disciplinary spectrum. Recent exhibitions include Social Design: Learning at Play with People’s Architecture Office, and the regenerative design exhibition Disruptive Matter for K11 in Hong Kong and Shenyang.

Organisation: M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, Design Trust

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, we are building one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. Our aim is to create a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometer waterfront promenade.

About Design Trust
Design Trust was established in 2014 by Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, a registered charity in Hong Kong since 2007, as a grant-funding platform. Design Trust supports creative projects that develop expertise and build research initiatives and content related to Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Working across a multiplicity of design disciplines, from graphics, media, and architecture to the built environment, Design Trust aims to actively accelerate creative research, design, and the development of meaningful projects that advocate for the positive role of design.