How is Africa positioning itself at present? Numerous voices from various African countries are establishing a new self-image and a new image to the outside world. One that confidently and ironically takes up traditional, tribalistic elements and combines them with global or multipolar elements. With great scope, this happens above all in music and fashion, which are linked in the medium of music video. What emerges is an Africa that does not consider itself peripheral but sees itself as the center.
The text is based on a lecture given at the KTU Linz: http://www.fluctuating-images.de/zwischen-tribalismus-und-globalitaet-mode-performance-im-zeitgenoessischen-afrikanischen-musikvideo.
It is part of the publication Stoffwechsel. Fashion between Globalization and Transculturality, edited by Julia Allerstorfer and Barbara Schroedl, published in the publication series mode global, edited by Burcu Dogramaci (2019).
Complex processes of design, production, distribution, circulation and consumption of clothing take place in all regions of the globalized world. In the process, no international fashion emerges beyond places; rather, ethnic, cultural, and gendered codings are woven into it. This applies to the collections of designers as well as to the everyday practice of styling by consumers. Using a variety of examples, fashion is examined here as a transcultural phenomenon between globalization and regional localization. The contributions also explore the relationships between clothing, popular culture, and the visual arts, as well as the levels of meaning of fashion and fashion theories in history and the present.
