Posing has been central to art, dance, and sculpture for thousands of years. In recent years, the growing interest in fashion media and modelling has also focused attention on questions of pose and posing. Incorporating notions of movement and stillness, posing can be understood in terms of historical modes of representation, as well as contemporary media and rapidly evolving relationships between bodies, subjects, and technologies of representation. Posing incorporates symbolic and semiotic meaning alongside embodied action and feeling. Recent coverage of the work of choreographer Stephen Galloway in 032c magazine, and new publications such as Steven Sebring’s Study of Pose: 1000 Poses by Coco Rocha testify to the growing interest in the cultural significance of posing and the pose – yet both remain under-researched areas with little discussion of their significance.

This symposium will assert the importance of pose as both a creative practice and an emerging area of critical inquiry. It will bring together multi-disciplinary academics and practitioners to discuss and develop new ways of understanding pose and posing in a historical and contemporary context. We encourage proposals for papers that address pose from global and diverse perspectives.  This event represents a potentially fruitful and exciting moment to bring these strands together to the benefit of researchers within practice and theory-based media, historians of dress, photography, art and film and allied disciplines. The keynote lecture will be delivered by David Campany, internationally recognised writer and curator, and Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster.

Programme

Friday 6 May. University of Westminster, Regent Street Cinema, London W1B 2UW

17.15 – 17.50            Registration

18.00 – 19.00          Keynote address: Dr David Campany (University of Westminster) – Title TBC

19.00 – 19.15           Comfort Break

19.15 – 19.40           Performance choreographed by Christopher Spraggs

19.40 – 21.00          Reception

Saturday 7 May. The Courtauld Institute of Art, London WC2R 0RN

09.30 – 10.00            Registration

10.00 – 10.15            Welcome and Introduction Dr Rebecca Arnold (Oak Foundation Lecturer in History of Dress & Textiles, CIA)

10.15 – 11.15            Session 1: Posing –Directing –Moving (Chair: TBC)

• Dr Penelope Rook (independent Scholar): From Couture to Clochard:  Posing the body in Vu
• Dr Peter K. Andersson (Lund University): Everyday Posing and Performativity in the Late Nineteenth-Century Street
• Marketa Uhlirova (Senior Research Fellow, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London): Choreographing the body: early fashion film, 1909-1920

11.15 – 11.30            Discussion

11.30 – 12.00            TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided, Seminar Room 1)

12.00 – 13.00            Session 2: Art –Fashion –Sculpture (Chair: Dr Katie Faulkner, Visiting Lecturer, The Courtauld Institute of Art)

• Dr Madeleine Newman (University of Leeds): Sculptural Fashion Shows? Pose, Parody and Performance 1968-1978
  
• Nancy Troy (Victoria & Roger Sant Professor in Art, Stanford University): The Art of the Pose: Performing Saint Laurent Performing Mondrian
• Dr Luisa Fink (Independent Scholar): Sculpture and Pose –The Actor in the Work of Franz Erhard Walther

13.00 – 13.15            Discussion

13.15 – 14.15             LUNCH (provided for the speakers only)

14.15 – 15.15            Session 4: Movement and Dance (Chair: Katerina Pantelides, PhD Candidate, The Courtauld Institute of Art)

• Tiffany Boyle (PhD Candidate, Birkbeck University of London): Pausing the Performance: Artistic Gymnastics and the Statuesque
  
• Dr MJ Thompson (Concordia University, Montreal): Posing and Concert Dance: Steve Paxton’s ‘Proxy’
  
• Elizabeth Welch (PhD Candidate, University of Texas at Austin): Deliberate Poses: George Platt Lynes’Dance Photography and the Dancer as Sculpture

15.15 – 15.30             Discussion
15.30 – 16.00            TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided, Seminar Room 1)

16.00 – 17.00            Session 4: Bodies –Gender –Politics (Chair: by Dr Eugenie Shinkle, Reader in Photography, Westminster University)

• Lauren Downing Peters (PhD Candidate, Centre for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University): “Fashion Plus”: Pose and the Plus-size Body in Vogue, 1986-1988
• Dr Sara Knelman (Assistant Professor, Ryerson University): Posing and Re-posing: Photography and the Politics of Posture
• Felice McDowell (Associate Lecturer & PhD Candidate, London College of Fashion): Writing about Posing: myths and narratives of post-war fashion modelling

17.00 – 17.15                       Discussion

17.15 – 18.00            Panel Discussion (Chair: TBC)

• Jan de Villeneuve (fashion model), Julian Marshall (fashion photographer)
• Caroline Hamilton (dance and costume historian)

18.00                         Drinks Reception