76 77 stage name nome d’arte «The realm of things is the empire of a sexuality without orgasm», wrote in 1992 that giant of Italian aesthetics that was Mario Perniola in a fundamental volume, The sex appeal of the inorganic, borrowing its title from a concept contained in the Passagen-Werk by Walter Benjamin – another fundamental aesthetic essay, within which spatiotemporal coordinates coincided with the ‘20s and ‘30s Paris as an ideal outpost of the realm of things: Fashion. In the turbid relationship between the man and the object, made by various fetishisms and sadomasochisms morbidly analysed by Marx on, in sæcula sæculorum, the dress/status-symbol represents an idolized fetish, a tribal totem to declare powers and affiliations, indistinguishable from the skin as a fabric – or from the fabric as a second skin. And like any self-respecting fetish, dress is invested with a sexual drive that Perniola necessarily defines as neutral8 in relation to what, though exquisitely produced, still remains an object. A suspended, artificial sexuality, an ecstatic rather than aesthetic experience, senseless but fully sexualised: «The clothes of our bodies, liberated over time and suspended like magic without expectations, are the object of a timeless and absolute sexual investment most likely associated with tailors, pattern makers, an upholsterer gone crazy rather than a philosopher». The sex appeal of the inorganic, indeed. Then came Iris van Herpen, who more than any other present protagonist in fashion has made future this kind of appeal by enhancing the object-dress with a seductive charge responding to other canons, more connected with the digital age in which we are immersed. An electric charge in an electro-sense, a magnetic flux according to the physical laws, capable of attracting even the appreciators of the new inorganic: the technological. Iris van Herpen’s new couture superimposes humanity of drapery to artificiality of 3D printing to give shape to a new fetish, hybrid between masterful technique and high technology. Undermining the idea of 'sensuality' linked to the sinuosity of a body, clothes of van Herpen sing the body electric, paraphrasing Walt Whitman, not enhancing mere flesh but its latent energy, magnifying it in prosthetic volumes dilating shoulders and hips, cyborg amazons in splendid armours or in hi-tech exoskeletons connected to the broadband, but first of all to their energy field. The techno-appeal of the inorganic, indeed. «It is around my body that things are arranged, it is in relation to it – and in relation as if in relation to a sovereign – that there is a below, an above, a right, a left, a forward and a backward, a near and a far. The body is the zero point of the world», wrote Foucault in his Utopian Body. Zenith of her research, in van Herpen the body, more than utopian, seems to come from iconography of great dystopian literature or cinematography. As with the gutta-percha skull of JT Maston in From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, imbued with the sublime Flemish portraiture from which the Dutch designer descends, her electro-Vanitas are capable of restoring hyper-contemporaneity to Flemish Vanitas. And like the invulnerable armours of Captain Nicholl in Verne's novel, and like the steam-punk scenario hybridized with elements of post-baroque Viscontian aesthetics in David Lynch’s Dune, Iris van Herpen's creations celebrate mind starting from the body of which they are refined prostheses. Reading Iris van Herpen's creations in this sense, moreover, exalts their fetish root in the purest meaning of the term, the etymological and anthropological one, since – as Lidewij Edelkoort notes in her Fetishism in Fashion – African tribes baptized as fetisso an object invested with magical, energetic, thaumaturgical powers, wearing which the body was magnified, bringing back sanctity to flesh. Through body, with body, in body: there is no sanctity without its related liturgy, and techno-Masses officiated by Iris van Herpen are translated into presentation of collections, within temples of the Parisian Haute Couture, each one baptized under the name of the sacred scientific inspiration from which it descends, whose eucharisties are hybrids between steel and silk, magnets and leather, ferrous and resin powders transubstantiated into dresses to be elevated to artistic performances. «Iris van Herpen has an anti-gravity quality to her work. It takes place in the future. There is a scientific dimension to using the body», said in a recent interview the priestess of performance art Marina Abramović. In Chemical Crows approach was Duchampian, both Dadaist and alchemical, in transforming over seven hundred umbrella sticks into stylized morphologies of golden wings. For the breathtaking Refinery Smoke van Herpen presented fluctuating, smoky, anti-gravitational volumes, made of woven metal gauze knitted and molded to its limits, in order to give it an evanescent form of industrial smoke clouds. At first silvery, over time their color is veering more and more towards rust. «Sooner or later they will become dust», she declared with satisfaction. Attracted by materials whose control is complicated and unpredictable – air, water, energy flow, to such an extent that she is collaborating with a Canadian company specialized in military camouflage, in the possible realization of a fabric able to make invisible those who will wear it – she turned into tangibility the intangible through collections like Radiation Invasion, that investigated the radioactive beam from which we are daily wrapped; Synesthesia, conducted on the enhancement of sensory perceptions; Voltage, through a performance by Carlos van Camp with high voltage Tesla coils; Magnetic Motion, by inserting into the still warm resin contained into the clothes some ferrous powders which, subjected to attraction/repulsion magnetic phenomena, evolved into chaotic shapes impossible to replicate; the poetic Lucid, translating the ability to daydream by means of OLF lenses, that modify the perception of reality interacting with light; Seijaku, a Japanese concept indicating the state of serenity despite the surrounding chaos inspired by cymatics, according to which sound gives shape to matter through sound waves rendered as geometric graphics, whose complexity is directly proportional to the increase in their frequency. And then Biopiracy, reflection on how much can we still say to be the sole possessors of our overexposed identities: in it, in collaboration with Lawrence Malstaf, the designer presented literally suspended in a vacuum models, like aliens in quarantine, like foetuses in a translucent womb; and Aeriform, made enchanted by the Danish ensemble Between Music whose components were each one immersed in enormous pools, to defy every physical law by playing occult melodies, arcane siren song, on specially conceived instruments. Electrically poetic performances, refined ethical creations. Sustainability, a fundamental attribute in van Herpen’s research, passes through a laser cut, materializes from a 3D printer, translates violent organic plumage into ethereal inorganic silicone, maintains extremely high and profoundly human the whole quality of the process, going along with necessary times dilation of additive manufacturing. A new idea of luxury, coming from the sovereignty conferred to the process rather than to the outcome. In Iris van Herpen’s atelier, as in a scientific laboratory and detached from the military cadencies of fashion, freedom lingers – evolutionist of Darwinian matrix, or positivist of Popperian matrix – to work on error, experimenting it, leaving it to sediment, taking it up again in due course, listening to its message. Tactile becomes digital. Optical transforms into glitch. A Debussy Arabesque electrified by Malinowski's Music Animation Machine; harmony remains unchanged. You can perceive its propagation waves. Into the amniotic darkness enveloping and preceding every kind of creation, in the name of Iris van Herpen third dimension is catwalking, alchemy of organic transforming into inorganic, generating a dancing star9 with a fetish appeal definitely techno. the techno-appeal of the inorganic 8 «Neutral sexuality emancipates sexuality from nature and entrusts it to artifice, that opens up a world in which difference between sexes, shape, sensible appearance, beauty, age and race are no longer important». 9 «I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star» [Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra. A book for all and none, tr. W. Kaufmann, I ed. 1891] Chemical crows [AW 2008-2009] Refinery smoke [SS 2009] Mummification [AW 2009-2010] Radiation invasion [SS 2010] Synesthesia [AW 2010-2011] Crystallization [SS 2011] Escapism [SS 2011] Capriole [AW 2011-2012] Micro [SS 2012] Hybrid holism [AW 2012-2013] Voltage [SS 2013] Wilderness embodied [AW 2013-2014] Embossed sounds [SS 2014] Biopiracy [AW 2014-2015] Magnetic motion [SS 2015] Hacking infinity [AW 2015-2016] �uaquaversal [SS 2016] Lucid [AW 2016-2017] Seijaku [AW 2016-2017 HC] Between the lines [SS 2017] Aeriform [AW 2017-2018] Ludi naturae [SS 2018] Syntopia [AW 2018-2019]
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