Dune is a journal that aims to be a space of reflection and a vehicle for written and visual content. An aesthetic territory, expression of the team at the Iuav University in Venice that focuses on fashion, design and visual culture. This sort of specification of its areas of interest is not intended to draw lines around Dune, but to provide a clarification of how these topics can serve as a gateway to an exploration of the contemporary world in all its most controversial and interesting facets.

A journal is the ideal format in which to gather intuitions, reflections, studies, scribbles..., favoring an enquiring and never heavy-handed approach. One molded by complexity, without fixed convictions and preconceptions, for each issue may contradict the one that went before.

The title alludes to Frank Herbert’s epic philosophical and religious work in the form of a science-fiction novel, published in 1965, and to the movie directed by David Lynch in 1984 (before the arrival of the digital). Herbert’s novel, and the whole series of books that he published on the theme between the sixties and the eighties, were the stimulus that propelled Lynch to make a film that ran counter to the trend of such productions at the time, since it renounced a reliance on special effects in order to hark back to the historical and mythological filmography of the sixties, and from even further back in time. Initially little appreciated by the critics and the public, the movie, like Herbert’s immense work, has left a deep mark on the collective imagination, to such an extent that this year will see the release of a remake, directed by Denis Villeneuve. But the word “dune” is also a sort of amplifier: it conjures up the endless expanses of the desert. It means the same thing in English and Italian, but in the former it is in the singular, whereas in the latter it is in the plural. It contradicts but confirms. It introduces us to those visions that are known as mirages or the Fata Morgana. And so we return to the mystical text that is Dune. In a future in which melange, or “the spice,” a drug that amplifies the senses and makes it possible to travel through space, overcoming all limits, becomes the engine and cause of all action.

So Dune is an invitation to look up and look further. Anticipation and unexpected are words which we could use as statements encapsulating the aims of a journal that reflects on fashion, but which above all highlight an idea of fashion that is distant from the forms we are traditionally accustomed to assign to it, in order to investigate its pervasive presence in the disciplines of design, in immaterial practices, in the processes and obsessions that generate images and imageries, in the recesses of the analogical thinking that drives the practices of art.

Mature fashion, now radically transformed by the new creators and the new trajectories that have opened up the boundaries in its dimension of culture and design, is our work, our interest, the hub of our relations, the knowledge that we share. In a dimension that takes on board all those cultural, political and sexual transformations that are bringing about changes – in language, in geopolitics, in the relationships between individuals – of which we do not know the outcome.

The decision to have monothematic issues, turning around a key word or phrase, stems from the desire to start out from a suggestion, and the possible digressions that may flow from it. The title of the first issue, Dark Room, is a theme that both cuts across boundaries and is mutable, depending on the perspective.

Dark room is intended in a primary, original sense: it is an image, an idea, a device that allows us to tackle questions which are relevant for us. Understood in its significance as a place of encounter in which to experiment with promiscuity and, at the same time, a place in which photographers do their work.

But also the dimly lit place, the store in which objects and artifacts are kept. The shadowy space of creation and the imagination. Or a pretext for more abstract and cerebral interpretations: the dark room as a paradigm of exhibition which coexists with more immediate and physical meanings, such as the setting for fluid and queer identity in the experience of clubbing.

Dune is a joint project, the fruit of exchanges of ideas and views, of discussions between the members of the editorial board, in dialogue with an advisory board that is characterized by the presence of academics, creatives and professionals active in the realms of criticism, fashion studies, contemporary art, architecture, the running of museums, curating, publishing, art direction and photography. And in dialogue with Gea and Cristiano Politi Seganfreddo, supportive publishers who are conscious of the need to put yourself continually on the line in the rough terrain on which they operate today. The journal is in English to allow it to take part in an international debate, but its identity is Italian: all the texts can be read in Italian at the back of the journal. A premium has been placed on elasticity, preferring a malleable structure to a division into columns and sections: a structure made up of written and visual essays, reviews, visual contributions and programmatic discourses, to which may be added new modes of communication from time to time. An idea based on archiving is the conceptual and graphic ploy that allows readers to get their bearings and to gradually assemble the materials, including the ones accessible online, from the dedicated webpage.

Dune is a free territory, a space of debate, of study, of research, that uses fashion because fashion is the common platform of the arts of the 21st century.

note

[1] Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), trad. it. di Ettore Capriolo, Contro l’interpretazione, (Milano: Mondadori, 1967), p. 17.

[2] Giorgio Agamben, Che cos’è il contemporaneo, (Roma: Nottetempo, 2008), p. 13.

Judith Clark is a Professor of Fashion and Museology at London College of Fashion (UAL), a curator and fashion exhibition-maker. Clark opened the first experimental gallery of fashion (1997–2002). Since then she has curated major exhibitions at the V&A, London; ModeMuseum, Antwerp; Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Palazzo Pitti, Florence; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Simone Handbag Museum, Seoul; La Galerie, Louis Vuitton, Paris and Cristobal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria. Her exhibition commissioned by the Barbican Art Gallery, entitled ‘The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined’ travelled to Winter Palais in Vienna, and to ModeMuseum, Hasselt.

j.clark@fashion.arts.ac.ukons

London College of Fashion

Paolo Di Lucente is a photographer born in Rome in 1984. In 2008, he moved to New York and, after a few years, landed in London, where he now lives and works. His gaze lingers on those scenes between reality and fiction. He has published in several international magazines, including Interview Germany, Document Journal, Mémoire Universelle, Dust, The Gourmand and Wallpaper magazine.

www.paolodilucente.com

Antonella Huber teaches Contemporary Museology at the Specialisation School in Historical and Artistic Heritage of the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna. Her ongoing research in the fields of museology, contemporary museography, and display practice in the cultural initiatives of public and private institutions is enriched by her work as an advisor for the planning of museum exhibitions. Her publications include Il Museo italiano. La trasformazione di spazi storici in spazi espositivi. Attualità dell’esperienza italiana degli anni ’50 (Milan: Lybra Immagine, 1997).

antonella.huber@gmail.com

Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna

Luca Ruali, architect and author, produces projects and drawings dedicated to the reciprocal seduction between nature, structures and girls, as well as publications and research dedicated to the Italian territory. In 2012, he was invited to the Italian Pavilion as part of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2019 he published The black country | Black Italy, an archive of actions and research dedicated to the abandonment of inland Italy.

www.lucaruali.net

Louis De Belle (Milan, 1988) studied at Politecnico di Milano and at Bauhaus University of Weimar. His works have been published by newspapers such as The Washington Post, Libération and The Independent. His photographs have been exhibited in international festivals, galleries and museums including The Royal Albert Hall and the KIND Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Amongst his publications: Failed Dioramas (2015), Besides Faith (2016) and Disappearing Objects (bruno, 2018). He lives and works between Milan and Berlin

www.louisdebelle.com

Elda Danese, is a PhD researcher in the history of contemporary art, with a thesis on fashion magazines as the iconographic source for figurative art of the 1970s. She deals with contemporary visual culture, the history of fashion and of textile. Since 2005 she has been a guest lecturer at the IUAV University of Venice for the degree courses in Fashion Design.

danese@iuav.it

IUAV University of Venice

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, and artist based in Toronto but working internationally. Along with a number of short films, he has written and directed eleven feature films, including Gerontophilia, which won the Grand Prix at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal in 2013. As a photographer he has had numerous gallery shows around the world, including a photo exhibit called Obscenity at La Fresh Gallery in Madrid which caused a national ruckus in Spain. His feature film L.A. Zombie was notably banned in Australia. His latest feature, Saint-Narcisse, will be released later this year.

www.brucelabruce.com

Francesco D’Aurelio graduated with a degree in Architecture at Iuav University of Venice. He currently focuses on exhibition making. He is also an academic and professional collaborator with the management of Iuav Moda, where he was a set designer for “Fashion at IUAV” for the 2017–19 editions. His research mainly deals with the relationships between architecture and sexuality, the city and the environment of building sites.

franc.daurelio@gmail.com

IUAV University of Venice

Marta Franceschini earned her MA in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is now a PhD candidate in Design Sciences at IUAV University in Venice. She is a contributor to the digital archive of Armani/Silos in Milan, and has collaborated on such exhibitions as Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion, 1945–1968 (Villa Reale, Monza, and NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale); Italiana. Italy through the Lens of Fashion 1971–2001 (Palazzo Reale, Milan); and Il Maschile. Androgynous Mind Eclectic Body (Gucci Garden Galleria, Florence). With Mario Lupano she edited the book Uomini all’Italiana. La confezione Zegna dalla sartoria all’industria (Venice: Marsilio, 2018). .

mfranceschini@iuav.it

IUAV University of Venice

Nicola Brajato is PhD Researcher in Fashion and Gender Studies at the University of Antwerp (Faculty of Social Sciences – Department of Communication Studies) with a research project on the role of Belgian fashion in redefining the concept of masculinity in terms of aesthetics, the body, and identity. He has participated in international conferences and given lectures about the relationship between fashion, the body, and identity in collaboration with MoMu (the fashion museum of Antwerp), the Antwerp Queer Arts Festival, and the 1313A* Antwerp Gender and Sexuality Network.

nicola.brajato@uantwerpen.be

University of Antwerp