Arts Thread

"GAGA" - a meaningless, seemingly worthless word that in the 21st century is almost exclusively associated with the most eccentric side of pop music culture; in reality, these four letters hide a world that lives intrinsically in every individual. The first sound, the first word, the first attempt to express oneself; two syllables that break the barriers of time, allowing a return to innocence, with no rules nor conventions, free to explore everything all over again, like the eyes of a child - innocent, curious and hungry for discovery. The "GAGA" collection finds its roots in the movement language of the same name, conceived by the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, who places movement and form as the arche of his "philosophy". I was lucky enough to practice this 'dance style', thus discovering a "new", liberating, perpetual, improvised, impulsive movement, which is translated by the Gaga dancers through their being "body builders with soft spines", because while they dance they are no longer shaped by earthly chemical and physical laws, but are "sculpted" by that energy that flows from the nucleus of each individual; the very energy that shapes the works of Chewy Stoll, who, with the computer, gives marble the power to forget its solid and motionless nature, deconstructing it through movement, thus giving it the "shape" of the Gaga dancers. The collection is built on the steps of "Ehad Mi Yodea", a choreography capable of telling the story, through the power of movement, of each individual who, learning to strip themselves of all the constraints and formalities that society imposes, rediscovers their authentic essence; indeed, the garments embody this philosophy, paying particular attention to the concept of movement which is reflected through cuts, volumes, panels and prints; the latter the result of the reworking of the study of the movement between science and art. What's central in the collection is the concept of "unconventional", deepened through the study of the project "Bad Press: Dissident Ironing"; this project, in fact, separates the task of ironing from the aesthetics of efficiency by exploring alternative models for folding, buttoning and ironing a men's shirt, exchanging the image of the functional with the dysfunctional. The"unconventional" is indeed shown in the collection through the reinterpretation of man's social uniform (the tailored suit, but also in the fabrics, which allude to classic men's tailoring, also revisited through special finishes and coatings (e.g. paper-touch poplin). A part of the fabrics in the collection have been airbrushed, namely to allude to the nuances present on some types of marble (the symbolic material of the collection). "GAGA" is a hymn to freedom, to that thought/form hidden in our core, to an unconventional soul: in fact, just as Gaga dance is in constant search of a "new" movement through t h e deconstruction of t h e conventional one, this uniform of man" through the power of movement; that same "uniform" worn by the dancers of "Echad mi yodea", which breaks down and reassembles by investigating unknown collection absorbs the same philosophy, deconstructing "the social forms, breaking down that cage which suffocates man through rigid sartorial rules.