2018-2020 > THE EROTIC CLOTH

The book The Erotic Cloth: Seduction and Fetishism in Textiles, which was the outcome of 3 years research, specifically seeks to discover the ways in which the qualities of cloth that seduce, conceal and reveal have been explored and exploited in art, design, cinema, politics and dance.

What we set out to do

To research, interrogate and develop ideas concerning the erotic nature of the relationship between cloth and the body; a subject which has tended to be the subtext of previous discourse, acknowledged but to a large degree unspoken.

To further develop the research in order to create an exhibition of related works.

What we achieved

A series of public events: a Colloquium, a Conference and 3 Seminars, 2 performances and a book.

The book, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018, with over 50 full colour illustrations, 12 chapters plus Introduction divided into 4 sections on Representation, Making and Re-making, Otherness, and Performance. The book contains a variety of debates that are at the heart of contemporary textile research, drawing on the fields of art, design, film, performance, culture and politics.

Invitations to present Papers at Manifesta 12, Palermo, Italy 2018, at the European Textile Network Conference, Haslach, Austria 2019, Festival of Erotic Art, London 2020 (postponed due to Covid 19)

An exhibition developed from the research undertaken for the book, Fabric: touch and identity, shown at Compton Verney Gallery opening March 14th 2020.

Statistics

Book sold to China, currently being translated into Chinese.

The Erotic Cloth - Original Colloquium

Date: 20 March 2015

Venue: Artworkers Guild, London
Call for Papers: September 18th 2014. 30 sent for Peer Review. 12 Selected + 3 video presentations and 1 Performance.

PROGRAMME

10.00 Registration and coffee - Video - Les R.mond performance @ Pont des arts PARIS 4th March 2011

10.30 Welcome & Introduction - Alice Kettle/Lesley Millar -

Session 1: The Place of Cloth

10.40 Always in the Act of Becoming: Folds, Scissors and Cleavage in Giovanni Battista Moroni’s Il Tagliapanni - Angela Maddock

11.00 Textual Textiles - Undressing Anne Lister - Caroline Baylis-Greene

11.20 A Perverted Taste: Italian depictions of Cloth and Puberty in mid-19th century marble - Dr. Claire Jones

11.40 Questions Alice/Lesley

Session 2: The Undisciplined Cloth

12.00 Articulating Our Tactile Experience With Textiles: Undisciplined Conversations On The Unspoken - Bruna Petreca et al

12.20 Kink in the classroom: pedagogy and erotic clothing - Brigitte Stockton

12.40 Beyond the Mat: Deciphering Eroticism in the Over-the-top Aesthetics of Professional wrestling - Ali Khan & Farida Ali

1.00 Questions Alice/Lesley

1.20 Lunch
Video presentations
Windmills of Your Mind - Louise Adkins
A Man Of The Cloth - Sharon McElroy
MOI NON PLUS - Liz Rideal

Session 3: The Alternative Cloth

2.20 The shirt off your back, Jack, James and Bobby - Prof. Catherine Harper

2.40 Guilt and Pleasure - the transposition of the historical fetishist image - Dr. Nigel Hurlstone

3.00 Transgressive Touch: The fetishizing of cloth in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) - Samatha Broadhead

3.20 Questions Alice/Lesley

3.40 Tea and coffee break

Session 4: The Mysterious Cloth

4.00 Curvatures of Cloth: ‘The Heart of True Eroticism’ in Serpentine Dance - Dr. Georgina Williams

4.20 Caressing Cloth: the warp and weft as site of exchange Dr. Catherine Dormor

4.40 Perception in the Folds: The Requirement of Having a Body - Grace Williams

5.00 Questions and Summary Alice/Lesley

5.20 UN/DRESS Performance - Masako Matsushita

5.30 End

COLLOQUIUM - link to report and paper abstracts - THE EROTIC CLOTH: Seduction and Fetishism

The Erotic Cloth - Book

Published: February 2018

Commissioned by Bloomsbury Academic, the book developed and extended themes that had emerged from the Colloquium. Abstracts were invited from selected speakers and others, submitted along with full book proposal all of which were subject to double Peer Review.

Final contents are:

Foreword - Mary Schoeser

An Introduction to the Erotic Cloth - Prof Lesley Millar and Prof Alice Kettle

The Representation of Cloth

1. Folds, Scissors and Cleavage in Giovanni Battista Moroni’s Il Tagliapanni - Angela Maddock
2. A Perverted Taste: Italian Depictions of Cloth and Puberty in Mid-nineteenth-century Marble - Dr Claire Jones
3. Stitching up: Embroidering the Sex life of a Fetishist Image-maker - Dr Nigel Hurlstone

Making and Remaking the Cloth

4. The Rustle of Taffeta – the Value of Hapticity in Research and Reconstruction of an Eighteenth-century Sack-back Dress - Debra Roberts
5. The Embroiderer's Jouissance: Stitching a Feminine Identity in an Environment of Mining Machismo - Ruth Hingston
6. Flying in the Face of Fashion; How through Punk, Fetish and Sexually Orientated Clothing Made it in to the Mainstream - Prof Malcolm Garrett in conversation with Prof Alice Kettle

The Alternative Cloth

7. Present or Absent Shirts: Creation of a Lexicon of Erotic Intimacy and Masculine Mourning - Prof Catherine Harper
8. Empowering the Replicant: Visual and Haptic Narratives in Blade Runner - Dr Savithri Bartlett and Caroline Wintersgill
9. Caressing Cloth: the Warp and Weft as Site of Exchange - Dr Catherine Dormor

The Performing Cloth

10. Curvatures of Cloth: ‘The Heart of True Eroticism’ in Serpentine Dance - Dr Georgina Williams
11. Cloth Echoes in Film: as Metaphor, as Symbol and as Romantic Portent - Liz Rideal
12. UN/DRESS - Masako Matsushita in conversation with Prof Lesley Millar

Afterword

Erotic Cloth - The case of kimono - Yuko Ikeda

Buy the book