Course Details
Course type: Group – in-person
Location: Ferrari Fashion School – Via Savona 97, Milano
Participants: Max 15
Schedule: July 20–24, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00/6:00 p.m.
Duration: 5 days – 40 total hours
Cost: €890
Language: English
Lecturer: Marta Jovanović
Enrollment closes: July 17, 2026
An immersive, hands-on one-week experience exploring the relationship between performance art and fashion, designed for fashion students, stylists, models, visual artists, performers, and anyone passionate about contemporary fashion and art.
Through practical workshops and visits to Milan’s iconic art and fashion spaces — including Fondazione Prada, Hangar Bicocca, Armani/Silos, and Fondazione Sozzani — participants will investigate the body as a creative language and clothing as an expressive, narrative extension of self.
The course combines lectures, exercises, and studio practice with the design of performative outfits and the creation of site-specific actions, culminating in a final performance.
This unique opportunity allows participants to experience the fashion capital as active creators, blending art, fashion, and performative experimentation into a formative, sensory experience that explores gesture, aesthetics, and contemporary identity.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- Understand the intersection of fashion and performance art as a creative practice.
- Explore the body as a medium of expression and the garment as a narrative tool.
- Analyze historical and contemporary case studies of fashion and performance art.
- Develop conceptual and material strategies for creating performative outfits.
- Design and execute a site-specific or studio-based performance integrating learned techniques.
- Engage critically with Milanese art and fashion institutions as contexts for performative practice.
Program
The course may be subject to changes to ensure the best learning experience.
Introduction: Fashion as Embodied Practice
- Participant introductions: backgrounds, creative interests, relationship to fashion and performance.
- Discussion: What does it mean to embody fashion?
- Key concepts: gesture, adornment, embodiment, presence, ritual.
- Viewing and discussion: examples of wearable art, live interventions, and experimental runway presentations.
- Group Exercise: Performative gestures with clothing — exploring the body as stage and garment as language.
- Workshop: Begin preparing sketches, mood boards, texts, or prototypes for a wearable or performative piece to be used in the final presentation.
Fashion Histories, Politics, and Iconoclasts (Part I)
- Screening and discussion: historical and contemporary intersections between fashion and performance art.
- Case studies: Leigh Bowery and Alexander McQueen — spectacle, transformation, and body politics.
- Group discussion: Fashion as expression of identity and resistance.
- Reflective journaling and sketching: Observing how museums construct narratives about clothing, identity, and self.
- Workshop: Continue developing sketches, mood boards, texts, or prototypes for the final performance.
Fashion Histories, Politics, and Iconoclasts (Part II)
- Case studies: Rick Owens, Carolee Schneemann, Nick Cave, Yoko Ono.
- Focus on ritual, repetition, and vulnerability in performance and costume.
- Discussion: Transgression, rebellion, and the erotic body in fashion.
- Workshop: Finalize sketches, mood boards, texts, or prototypes for the wearable or performative piece that will be used in the final presentation.
Radical Adornment and Final Preparation
- Lecture and discussion: transformation of the body through material, gesture, and adornment.
- Artists discussed: Narcissister, Boychild, Eva & Adele, Rebecca Horn, Marcia Farquhar, Hannah Wilke, Vaginal Davis.
- Concepts: masking, layering, distortion, and excess.
- Workshop: Full rehearsal and final preparation for performances.
- Peer and instructor feedback to refine gestures, materials, and performance structure
Final Performances and Reflection
- Composition of the final board (layout, palette, presentation)
- Group presentation of final works
- Open discussion and lecturer feedback
External Visits
During the week, the Academy will organize several external visits, such as: Armani/Silos; MUDEC – Museum of Cultures; Fondazione Prada; Palazzo Morando Costume-Moda/-Immagine; Fondazione Sozzani; Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, depending on the exhibition schedules of each location.
Materials
Students are responsible for providing the required materials. It is recommended to have the following on hand for the course:
- One or more garments or accessories with personal or symbolic meaning
- Sketchbook or journal for documentation and reflection
- Basic materials for costume modification or wearable creation (fabrics, thread, glue, found materials, etc.)
- Digital device for recording and editing short performance videos
Lecturer
Marta Jovanović
Marta Jovanović is a performance artist and educator with a mission to promote and facilitate further progress of the discipline. Founder of the Performance Art Program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, artist in residency at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2017, Jovanović is also the subject of the multiple award-winning documentary “Born Just Now”, by the American director Robert Adanto. Her works, among which the most notable ones are “Pionirka”, “It is My Body”, “Love”, and “Motherhood”, are in important private and museum collections. The performance “BelgradeMermaid” opened the Belgrade Biennale in 2018, while its continuation “Mermaid’s Tale” became a performance in Virtual Reality the following year. Curator Kathy Battista wrote a survey of the artist’s early works titled “Marta Jovanovic: Performing the Self”, which was published by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of City University of New York, while in the book New York New Wave, Battista positions Jovanović among the most urgent New York City contemporary feminist artists.
Fees
Fee:
- €890 (single payment)
- two installments of €450 (the first upon enrollment; the second within 30 days)
Discounts:
- Plena Education Students and Alumni (RUFA, SPD, Ferrari Fashion School, Saint Louis College of Music, CIELS, CAST, MADE): 50% discount:
- Former Participants of Plena Education Short and Summer Courses: 15% discount
- University Students: 10% discount (upon presentation of valid student ID or transcript)
- For corporate/school/academy/group/family packages and agreements: please contact corsibrevi@plenaeducation.it
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