METHODS LAB Workshop
30 April 2021
2-4pm BST
Online event
FREE, ALL WELCOME
Please register at eventbrite
How to do sociology with…. fashion magazines
How to do sociology with… the re-assembling of a fashion magazine?
with
Femke de Vries
+
Practice Matters (an interdisciplinary team of PhD researchers — Silvia Bombardini, George Kalivis, Floriane Misslin, Thomas Wadsworth)
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Sociological methods often prioritise a focus on what data we can extract from our texts, but how can we think and work differently around them?
Inventive and live sociology doesn’t just ask questions over new ways of extracting and examining data, but also about how we can act in the world through such interventions. Using online fashion magazines as a case study, we aim to explore the limits and possibilities of our methods beyond the traditions of text-based research.
In collaboration with fashion artist and researcher Femke de Vries, Practice Matters invite you to consider:
How can multiple narratives emerge from the collective re-assembling of a fashion website?
How might screenshotting, annotating, extracting and connecting visuals and texts from a fashion webpage shape how we do sociology?
Femke de Vries works as an artist and researcher in fashion where she explores the interaction between clothing as material objects of use and fashion as a process of value production. Through re-readings from various perspectives, she aims to expose workings of fashion and modes of fashioning. Seeking alternative scenarios for makers and users she takes in consideration the role of fashion communication formats, cultural references and material culture questioning hierarchies, mystification, alienation and emphasizing the physical reality of use. Her research led practice is driven by collaboration and results in works that connect theory and practice. She has a background in Fashion Design and Fashion Strategy (ArtEZ Fashion Masters).
Practice Matters is an interdisciplinary team of PhD researchers — Silvia Bombardini, George Kalivis, Floriane Misslin, Thomas Wadsworth — based in the Methods Lab at Goldsmiths, University of London. Their aim is to broaden the way research is conducted, communicated and disseminated. Using creative toolkits, material objects and affects, Practice Matters seek to expand and materialise the resources we have to inspire researchers to consider different modes of engaging with the social world.
Part of the “How to do sociology with…’ series, which explores how we do sociology with specific materials, media, devices, objects and atmospheres, and what happens when these things become the focus of our attention.
