Patricia Pisters
This article focuses on the multi-media artwork The Capsule by the Greek film director Athina Rachel Tsangari, which was commissioned by the non-profit organization DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art in the context of a project that bridges fashion and other art forms. Through an analysis of both the installation piece and the film that comprise the artwork, the article argues that The Capsule introduces a methodological tool for the understanding of artistic practices: a concept named after its own title and adapting Andrew Pickering’s notion of the ‘mangle of practice’ from the context of the production of scientific knowledge to the one defined by two artistic expressions – fashion and cinema – which are often regarded as commodities yet they negotiate in a profound way the processes of subjectification within fixed social norms. The goal of the article is to prove how this particular interaction between fashion and cinema will help us perceive them as primarily performative media, as opposed to representational ones.