The Measures Taken

In 'The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic' Mario Perniola writes of the erotic possibilities of these intersections and the juxtapositions they produce, as they distribute sexuality over machinery or over fabric- 'the fleshy clothes of our bodies are just like those that we leave on the armchair at night before we go to bed-the folds of the female sex are no different from the depressions of a seat cover, the skin that runs along the rod of the male sex is similar to the covering of an arm rest.' Exter's designs are both seduced and horrified by these possibilities, but they incarnate a total remaking of the human figure, a reimagining into a body of pulleys and levers, full of power and potential aggression- though with semblances of bare skin left as a frisson and a reminder.

This total assault on the 'natural' shape and contour (and content) of the human is sadly confined to science fiction design for the most part, though Varvara Stepanova's clothes designs are violently anti-naturalistic in a way closer to Balla's 'merry dazzle'. Her clothing designs of 1924 and her writings on textiles and costumes advocate a kind of mass produced futurist dress, in explicit opposition to the concept of 'fashion' in the sense of successive trends, couture and ornament. Stepanova's ideas were unashamedly Marxist and technocratic, yet are as far from the concrete and grey that typified 'actually existing socialism' (not least for post-punk groups like Joy Division) as possible. Stepanova uses terms like 'standardisation' and 'mechanisation' as battle cries. The article 'From Clothing to Pattern and Fabric' derides designers as �the decorative executors of the so-called 'demands of the market''. However there is no opposition to fashion in the sense of decoration, the enjoyment of sight and texture. Instead she advocates that this most irrational component of the capitalist superstructure be rationalised.