Tuesday, April 13, 2010
+ - = +, - + = -, + + = +, - - = +
"what he feared most was the blind spot between us and the future, the space between entities where we could get lost forever".
sulki choi & min choi
i am here, and there is nothing to say.
if among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment. what we re-quire is silence; but what silence requires is that i go on talking.
give any one thought a push: it falls down easily; but the pusher and the pushed pro-duce the enter-
tainment called a dis-cussion.
shall we have one later?
or we could simply de-cide not to have a dis-
cussion.
what ever you like. but now there are silences and the words help make the silences.
i have nothing to say
and i am saying it and that is poetry as i need it.
this space of time is organized.
we need not fear these silences, ----
if among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment. what we re-quire is silence; but what silence requires is that i go on talking.
give any one thought a push: it falls down easily; but the pusher and the pushed pro-duce the enter-
tainment called a dis-cussion.
shall we have one later?
or we could simply de-cide not to have a dis-
cussion.
what ever you like. but now there are silences and the words help make the silences.
i have nothing to say
and i am saying it and that is poetry as i need it.
this space of time is organized.
we need not fear these silences, ----
Thursday, April 8, 2010
life after death
today i read a dead persons blog for the first time, i stumbled across a korean model´s page through some other fashion blogs and found out afterwards that she committed suicide late last year.
i went back to her oldest posts to understand someones pain in-between lines, she was mostly sarcastic, i felt a ghost lingering from the other side of that computer (still feel some sort of hole in my stomach)... how could anyone have read the signs? (denial)... they were all there.
some part of me thinks taking a look into someone´s life like this is morbid and wrong, and and another thinks this is the fate of everyone and anyone who subscribes to the public in a grotesquely public way i.e. me blogging this this second, facebook, twitter, and the endless sites that will continue exposing us even more to a faceless crowd.
a sense of belonging maybe? who knows, for all i know i´m writing this to myself, for as a person who observes and sometimes doesn´t express true feelings, i am letters without a face, so there i am.
this sense of dying and reading a dead persons blog ties into an article i read in time mag. and since lately i´ve been curious about what happens to your internet life if you die, this is what i found out:
"We first realized we needed a protocol for deceased users after the Virginia Tech shooting, when students were looking for ways to remember and honor their classmates," says Facebook spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder. The company responded by creating a "memorial state" for profiles of deceased users, in which features such as status updates and group affiliations are removed. Only the user's confirmed friends can continue to view the profile and post comments on it.
If next of kin ask to have a profile taken down, Facebook will comply. It will not, however, hand over a user's password to let a family member access the account, which means private messages are kept just that.
Rival MySpace has a similar policy blocking account access but has fewer restrictions on profile-viewing. (This inspired an entrepreneur to create MyDeathSpace.com, which started out aggregating profiles of the deceased and has since morphed into a ghoulish tabloid.)
E-mail is more complicated. Would you want, say, your parents to be able to access your account so they could contact all your far-flung friends — whom you don't have in your address book because you don't have an address book — and tell them that you've passed on? Maybe. Would you want them to be able to read every message you've ever sent? Maybe not.
Yahoo! Mail's rule is to keep accounts private. "The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for an account is to treat their online activities as confidential, even after their death," says spokesman Jason Khoury. Court orders sometimes overrule that. In 2005, relatives of a Marine killed in Iraq requested access to his e‑mail account so they could make a scrapbook. When a judge sided with the family, Yahoo! copied the messages to a CD instead of turning over the account's password. Hotmail now allows family members to order a CD as long as they provide proof that they have power of attorney and a death certificate. Gmail requires the same paperwork, plus a copy of an e‑mail the deceased sent to the petitioner.
Read more here.
on top of all of that, i´m browsing the old archives of jakandjil and i find this, a picture of dash snow and purples olivier zahm riding the metro in paris, feels like the grave speaking, so weird.
d.e.p.
i went back to her oldest posts to understand someones pain in-between lines, she was mostly sarcastic, i felt a ghost lingering from the other side of that computer (still feel some sort of hole in my stomach)... how could anyone have read the signs? (denial)... they were all there.
some part of me thinks taking a look into someone´s life like this is morbid and wrong, and and another thinks this is the fate of everyone and anyone who subscribes to the public in a grotesquely public way i.e. me blogging this this second, facebook, twitter, and the endless sites that will continue exposing us even more to a faceless crowd.
a sense of belonging maybe? who knows, for all i know i´m writing this to myself, for as a person who observes and sometimes doesn´t express true feelings, i am letters without a face, so there i am.
this sense of dying and reading a dead persons blog ties into an article i read in time mag. and since lately i´ve been curious about what happens to your internet life if you die, this is what i found out:
"We first realized we needed a protocol for deceased users after the Virginia Tech shooting, when students were looking for ways to remember and honor their classmates," says Facebook spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder. The company responded by creating a "memorial state" for profiles of deceased users, in which features such as status updates and group affiliations are removed. Only the user's confirmed friends can continue to view the profile and post comments on it.
If next of kin ask to have a profile taken down, Facebook will comply. It will not, however, hand over a user's password to let a family member access the account, which means private messages are kept just that.
Rival MySpace has a similar policy blocking account access but has fewer restrictions on profile-viewing. (This inspired an entrepreneur to create MyDeathSpace.com, which started out aggregating profiles of the deceased and has since morphed into a ghoulish tabloid.)
E-mail is more complicated. Would you want, say, your parents to be able to access your account so they could contact all your far-flung friends — whom you don't have in your address book because you don't have an address book — and tell them that you've passed on? Maybe. Would you want them to be able to read every message you've ever sent? Maybe not.
Yahoo! Mail's rule is to keep accounts private. "The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for an account is to treat their online activities as confidential, even after their death," says spokesman Jason Khoury. Court orders sometimes overrule that. In 2005, relatives of a Marine killed in Iraq requested access to his e‑mail account so they could make a scrapbook. When a judge sided with the family, Yahoo! copied the messages to a CD instead of turning over the account's password. Hotmail now allows family members to order a CD as long as they provide proof that they have power of attorney and a death certificate. Gmail requires the same paperwork, plus a copy of an e‑mail the deceased sent to the petitioner.
Read more here.
on top of all of that, i´m browsing the old archives of jakandjil and i find this, a picture of dash snow and purples olivier zahm riding the metro in paris, feels like the grave speaking, so weird.
d.e.p.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
reflections about meaning
The material and the spiritual are so closely entwined in the human mind that making meaning for us almost seems like an involuntary act. It is near impossible to dissociate the two while making our reality comprehensible to us which is to give it meaning. 'Meaning' verily is elicited by the brain by putting the material and spiritual within a unified lens to conjure an image within our minds that makes sense - Id it is
First, we need to examine “meaning” itself, and expose a mistake, a very basic mistake, in how many people think about it. To say that some event means something without at least some implicit understanding of who it means something to is to express an incomplete idea, no different than sentence fragments declaring that “Went to the bank” or “Exploded.” Without first specifying a particular subject and/or object, the very idea of meaning is incoherent.
Nature is concrete reality, we presume, something more real than abstraction. But if nature is more real than abstraction, what use is abstraction? Perhaps it is the case that abstraction is more real than "nature". Perhaps abstraction can be used to extend what is effortlessly given to us. Perhaps abstraction can be employed to usefully transform what is now presented to us without effort as the object. Maybe we can perceive with our (collectively-expanded) imagination levels of reality that are hidden, not so much from our senses, as by our senses.
We think we live in the "objective" world, but we do not. The objective world is something that has been conjured up for us recently - absurdly recently, from the perspective of evolutionary biology - by the processes of science operating over a span of five centuries (or, perhaps, to give the Greeks their due, over the last thirty centuries). This does not mean that the objective world is not real, even though theories about its nature are in constant flux. What it does mean is that the environment of human beings might well be regarded as "spiritual," as well as "material."
Now if we give a closer look at reading, because it may be fundamental, about how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been fundamentally a mystery. New studies fill in some details on how the brains of proficient readers handle words. One suggestion is that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another, is that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech.
Changing the angle if we look at it from the traditional targets of scientific inquiry that are available to sensory analysis, localized in time and space, and simultaneously accessible to the individual experience of multiple observers (at least under carefully controlled conditions). Meaning, which can vary dramatically between observers, does not reveal itself in any such straightforward manner. It is therefore not clear that it can be addressed scientifically, even in principle. At least this is the classical argument. But what if meaning could be construed as a stable emergent consequence of the interaction of subjects, objects, elements or situations, conceived of from a more abstract point of reference than that commonly utilized?
by mariana soffer.
read more at the total library: spacecollective
First, we need to examine “meaning” itself, and expose a mistake, a very basic mistake, in how many people think about it. To say that some event means something without at least some implicit understanding of who it means something to is to express an incomplete idea, no different than sentence fragments declaring that “Went to the bank” or “Exploded.” Without first specifying a particular subject and/or object, the very idea of meaning is incoherent.
Nature is concrete reality, we presume, something more real than abstraction. But if nature is more real than abstraction, what use is abstraction? Perhaps it is the case that abstraction is more real than "nature". Perhaps abstraction can be used to extend what is effortlessly given to us. Perhaps abstraction can be employed to usefully transform what is now presented to us without effort as the object. Maybe we can perceive with our (collectively-expanded) imagination levels of reality that are hidden, not so much from our senses, as by our senses.
We think we live in the "objective" world, but we do not. The objective world is something that has been conjured up for us recently - absurdly recently, from the perspective of evolutionary biology - by the processes of science operating over a span of five centuries (or, perhaps, to give the Greeks their due, over the last thirty centuries). This does not mean that the objective world is not real, even though theories about its nature are in constant flux. What it does mean is that the environment of human beings might well be regarded as "spiritual," as well as "material."
Now if we give a closer look at reading, because it may be fundamental, about how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been fundamentally a mystery. New studies fill in some details on how the brains of proficient readers handle words. One suggestion is that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another, is that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech.
Changing the angle if we look at it from the traditional targets of scientific inquiry that are available to sensory analysis, localized in time and space, and simultaneously accessible to the individual experience of multiple observers (at least under carefully controlled conditions). Meaning, which can vary dramatically between observers, does not reveal itself in any such straightforward manner. It is therefore not clear that it can be addressed scientifically, even in principle. At least this is the classical argument. But what if meaning could be construed as a stable emergent consequence of the interaction of subjects, objects, elements or situations, conceived of from a more abstract point of reference than that commonly utilized?
by mariana soffer.
read more at the total library: spacecollective
coherencia conectada
Georges Poulet:
“Like everybody else, I believe that the end of criticism is to arrive at an intimate knowledge of the reality criticized. Now it seems to me that such intimacy is possible only insofar as critical thought becomes the thought criticized, insofar as it succeeds in re-feeling, re-thinking, re-imagining that thought from the inside. Nothing could be less objective than such a movement of the mind. Contrary to common belief, criticism must avoid attending to any object whatever (whether it be the person or the author, considered as someone else, or his work, considered as a thing); for what must be obtained is a subject, that is to say, a spiritual activity that can only be understood if one puts oneself in its place and revives within us its role as subject.” – “Response de,” Les Lettres nouvelles (June 1959)
“Like everybody else, I believe that the end of criticism is to arrive at an intimate knowledge of the reality criticized. Now it seems to me that such intimacy is possible only insofar as critical thought becomes the thought criticized, insofar as it succeeds in re-feeling, re-thinking, re-imagining that thought from the inside. Nothing could be less objective than such a movement of the mind. Contrary to common belief, criticism must avoid attending to any object whatever (whether it be the person or the author, considered as someone else, or his work, considered as a thing); for what must be obtained is a subject, that is to say, a spiritual activity that can only be understood if one puts oneself in its place and revives within us its role as subject.” – “Response de,” Les Lettres nouvelles (June 1959)
Monday, March 29, 2010
EAT ME
mis muy queridos amigos de ROCKETS reúnen a este trío en el d.f. para encender nuestras suelas.
abajo la info, no se lo pierdan....
GIRA CÓMEME en MÉXICO
Feat. MATIAS AGUAYO, DIEGORS & REBOLLEDO
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Después de posicionarse el año pasado como una de las casas disqueras mas propositivas, CÓMEME está listo para rechinarnos los dientes. Tras el éxito de las gira europeas y sudamericanas, tres de los artistas que han definido el sonido CÓMEME estarán juntos en MEXICO compartiendo los decks para nosotros. DIEGORS, REBOLLEDO Y MATÍAS AGUAYO vienen a enseñarnos que la experiencia en el DANCEFLOOR puede ser mucho mas rica que como la conociamos antes.
Para quienes todavía no están infectados por los húmedos sonidos de Cómeme, deben de saber que las miradas de la crítica internacional ha puesto especial atención en sus actividades; han fascinado (sobre todo en Europa) en como se han apropiado de los ritmos de las periferias latinoamericanas, unidos a los 4/4´s, han convertido sus tracks en poderosas JOYAS DE LA PISTA DE BAILE...
M A T Í A S A G U A Y O
Cómeme / Kompakt / Chile
D I E G O R S
Cómeme / Chile
R E B O L L E D O
Cómeme / Imeca / México
*** P R E V E N T A LIMITADA *****
Sistemas y Puntos de venta ETICKET
SICARIO: Colima 124 Colonia Roma, Ciudad de México
http://www.eticket.com.mx / Call Center 01.800.38.42.538
Preventa1: $170 General más cargos.
Día del evento $230+cargos
18 años.
Enlace directo para compra de Boletos: http://bit.ly/cI01m2
abajo la info, no se lo pierdan....
GIRA CÓMEME en MÉXICO
Feat. MATIAS AGUAYO, DIEGORS & REBOLLEDO
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Después de posicionarse el año pasado como una de las casas disqueras mas propositivas, CÓMEME está listo para rechinarnos los dientes. Tras el éxito de las gira europeas y sudamericanas, tres de los artistas que han definido el sonido CÓMEME estarán juntos en MEXICO compartiendo los decks para nosotros. DIEGORS, REBOLLEDO Y MATÍAS AGUAYO vienen a enseñarnos que la experiencia en el DANCEFLOOR puede ser mucho mas rica que como la conociamos antes.
Para quienes todavía no están infectados por los húmedos sonidos de Cómeme, deben de saber que las miradas de la crítica internacional ha puesto especial atención en sus actividades; han fascinado (sobre todo en Europa) en como se han apropiado de los ritmos de las periferias latinoamericanas, unidos a los 4/4´s, han convertido sus tracks en poderosas JOYAS DE LA PISTA DE BAILE...
M A T Í A S A G U A Y O
Cómeme / Kompakt / Chile
D I E G O R S
Cómeme / Chile
R E B O L L E D O
Cómeme / Imeca / México
*** P R E V E N T A LIMITADA *****
Sistemas y Puntos de venta ETICKET
SICARIO: Colima 124 Colonia Roma, Ciudad de México
http://www.eticket.com.mx / Call Center 01.800.38.42.538
Preventa1: $170 General más cargos.
Día del evento $230+cargos
18 años.
Enlace directo para compra de Boletos: http://bit.ly/cI01m2
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"alchemically braindamaged"
post written by alchemically braindamaged.... every letter has MY and YOUR name on it.
I have this almost continuous sensation now, like everything is this huge knot, constantly constricting, and constricting and trying to close down ever tighter on absolutely nothing.
It even spills over into my dreams, in slightly absurd forms. Like trying to fill in a blank on a test form, and finding that nothing feels quite right, and that empty space is just so disturbing, and nothing can quite fill it. Or playing starcraft in my dreams and wanting to create that perfect formation, and yet that same sense of dis-ease, of absence that cannot be resolved.
and every so often, I snap out of it, and it’s just the play of sensations again. I am none of this, none of this… nobody home.
I try not too think too much about some of the neurological implications of all this on the enterprise of enlightenment. I mean, here we are trying to attain to the absolute, or ultimate reality, and we’re just encountering exactly what you’d expect, if you really thought about what a sentient mind that could only experience itself in terms of sensory impulses in the nervous system would be like. It’s as if you could create a perfect, real-time recreation of a human being in some kind of computer system, and that software hologram was perfect right down to all the subjective phenomena. but it’s not real. it’s a simulacra. and that’s what we are. we are simulacra of ourselves, created within ourselves, and taking it as the real. how very baudrillard. anything we know, or think we know, about ‘reality’ is just more stuff floating around in the nervous system, and it always will be. including all this ‘god’ stuff. and short of death, there’s no way of truly knowing one way or another.
don’t worry, it’s not a crisis of spiritual conviction or anything. sensations are just as much spirit as anything else. even if it’s all just noise on the wiring of our bodies, then so be it. another mountain to climb. people who are in it for ‘the goal’ are just tourists. nothing ever really ends.
it’s a very fractal thing: the more you do, the more you see, and the more you see, the more there is to do. I guess that’s why every true master I’ve ever met considered themselves a begginer. you will always have all your work still ahead of you, even if no one else can see it. you kind of have to make your peace with that at some point, no matter what your personal everest happens to be. if it’s really worth doing, it’s worth doing forever. comfort, conclusion, ’success’, ownership, status, identity…? throw them on the fire. they mean nothing. and throw yourself on the fire while you’re at it. burning forever is the only way to go.
z.b.
I have this almost continuous sensation now, like everything is this huge knot, constantly constricting, and constricting and trying to close down ever tighter on absolutely nothing.
It even spills over into my dreams, in slightly absurd forms. Like trying to fill in a blank on a test form, and finding that nothing feels quite right, and that empty space is just so disturbing, and nothing can quite fill it. Or playing starcraft in my dreams and wanting to create that perfect formation, and yet that same sense of dis-ease, of absence that cannot be resolved.
and every so often, I snap out of it, and it’s just the play of sensations again. I am none of this, none of this… nobody home.
I try not too think too much about some of the neurological implications of all this on the enterprise of enlightenment. I mean, here we are trying to attain to the absolute, or ultimate reality, and we’re just encountering exactly what you’d expect, if you really thought about what a sentient mind that could only experience itself in terms of sensory impulses in the nervous system would be like. It’s as if you could create a perfect, real-time recreation of a human being in some kind of computer system, and that software hologram was perfect right down to all the subjective phenomena. but it’s not real. it’s a simulacra. and that’s what we are. we are simulacra of ourselves, created within ourselves, and taking it as the real. how very baudrillard. anything we know, or think we know, about ‘reality’ is just more stuff floating around in the nervous system, and it always will be. including all this ‘god’ stuff. and short of death, there’s no way of truly knowing one way or another.
don’t worry, it’s not a crisis of spiritual conviction or anything. sensations are just as much spirit as anything else. even if it’s all just noise on the wiring of our bodies, then so be it. another mountain to climb. people who are in it for ‘the goal’ are just tourists. nothing ever really ends.
it’s a very fractal thing: the more you do, the more you see, and the more you see, the more there is to do. I guess that’s why every true master I’ve ever met considered themselves a begginer. you will always have all your work still ahead of you, even if no one else can see it. you kind of have to make your peace with that at some point, no matter what your personal everest happens to be. if it’s really worth doing, it’s worth doing forever. comfort, conclusion, ’success’, ownership, status, identity…? throw them on the fire. they mean nothing. and throw yourself on the fire while you’re at it. burning forever is the only way to go.
z.b.
Friday, February 19, 2010
paolo soleri
"es imprescindible ser optimistas para salvarnos de la autodestrucción."
everytime i read you i admire you more.
everytime i read you i admire you more.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
mode
as one who has professed vehement interest in fashion since time of reason, i haven´t had a lot to say in this most apt space... as i decided to write this entry, i was pondering the why?, why had my voice dissappeared towards an essential topic coherent to my nature?
i denied the banality of my profession... or maybe i felt like i had nothing else to repeat.
fashion has become such a repetitive cause of events and recycling of themes that tend to oscillate in the past. a big word usually learned in fashion school is zeitgeist, "fashion projects the zeitgeist". true, dressing mirrors our surrounding, our moment, the spot; so why look to the past? why not look to the future?...
i´m not referring to a kubrick future, i´m referring to a future that will tune us into our true necessities; those regarding our direction on this planet, the force connecting and impulsing our hearts and our minds towards an inevitable end.
existentialist as this may sound, death is our common certainty. so how do we move to say something worth saying? an endless quest, where we most likely will die not knowing a third of the answers, but in the meantime, we can try.
the unavoidable rhizome, the thread connecting us all.
a part from my usual quasi spiritual rants, (on the superficial note; which is just as important).. i concluded that i stopped posting fashion because for one, i stopped reading fashion magazines, i was extremely specific with what runway shows i wanted to see. they´re usually from 5 to 15, depends on the mood of the season.
these designers are a regular stop:
nicolas ghesquière
martin margiela
anne valérie hash
marios schwab
louise goldin
dries van noten
givenchy
haider ackermann
hussein chalayan
jil sander
rick owens
sophia kokosalaki
last seasons´alexander mcqueen blew my mind, beautifully mind "bottling".
today, out of curiosity, i checked out new york fashion week, an event i stopped following a while ago.
the correctly hyped duo, kate and laura mulleavy of rodarte were somewhat of a point of confusion. they mentioned they had taken a trip from el paso to marfa texas, picking up on visual inspiration. the post also spoke about them wanting to go back to their mexican roots, so they threw in fiestas de quinceañeras, ciudad juarez, and ladies working at maquiladoras... ¿qué? i truly doubt either one of these girls have been remotely close to experiencing the reality of their inspiration points, or even understanding them, not even i can fully understand.
ciudad juarez is one of the worlds most dangerous cities, i agree on making some sort of political stance to raise awareness, but their collection was far from that.
it sounds like a joke, between lace, knits, treated fabrics, and layers; the show looks native american slash mexican flea market.
it would have been much more relevant to pose this as inspiration.
and yes, we all know texas used to be mexico a long time ago, but now a day, texas is hardly considered mexico, or is even close to what mexico actually is.
to my surprise after i got over my confusion, as i was looking through haute couture spring/autumn 2010, i bumped into one of my all time fashion intrigues (this and margiela´s face).. the thing is that one of my all time favorite songs is add (n) to x´s, "take me to your leader" (i posted a while back).... so
one day i was reading visionaire, there was a retrospect on fashions most influential and avant garde designers, josephus thimister stuck to my brain.
he was creative director at balenciaga pre-ghesquière and part of the reason he had problems at the end of his run was for inviting add (n) to x to play at a runway show, making some guests get up and leave. this doesn´t sound as bold today, but back in the 90s and in the position balenciaga was in, almost bankrupt, there wasn´t much room for error.
today i discovered that after around a decade of absence, thimister has returned with a haute couture line. (i must admit i got excited looking at his name on the screen, this post is a clear giveaway.)
violence and opulence was the theme; characeristic knits, basic color palette, texture, richness, and elegance stepped out defining the simply sublime (the sublime is both combination of pain and beauty.)
ciudad juarez would have fit into this slot.
thimister is part of the deconstructivist belgians that graduated from the royal academy of fine arts in antwerp (late 80s early 90s), most of which have been constantly challenging the borders between all creative disciplines, collaborating with notorious figures, or non-notorious figures, revolutionizing fashion, questioning the reason we get up and get dressed every morning, and actually introducing, and setting forth a chain of events that inspire many, and set fashion at an intellectual and artistic level, most commercial brands and buyers, ignore.
i´m a bit of a snob when it comes to fashion, nothing seems to surprise me (confection, silhuette, and styling wise), seems like everything right? well no, before all that comes the idea. the conceptual development, 75.5% of idea will determine a collections success.
reader, now you may ask yourself, why are most commercial collections so successful? and michell answers, "because they feed off the good ideas".
the idea shapes and molds every fabric, every form, and every stitch.
it was a breath of fresh air taking a look at anne valérie hashs´ spring 2010 haute couture show. now the first question i asked myself before looking at her collection was "what is a.v.h. going to do up against giants like dior and chanel that spend tens of thousands on a single couture piece?"...
so she answered me and said, "i don´t want to be dior, chanel, or armani privé"...
ah the idea.
hash wrote to some of her closest friends asking them to donate a piece of their wardrobe.. she wrote to alber elbaz(i love him even if íf i´m not a huge lanvin fan he could easily be on my list), pete doherty, tilda swinton, jean paul gaultier, etc. now here´s a nice range of creatives to form part of your collection in some indirect way right?
... elbaz sent his pijamas (more love to him), doherty sent his jacket, and swinton a vivienne westwood t-shirt, among other collaborations... oh, and a recent visit we had to our city also contributed (with surprisingly good memory she remembered me from last years ASVOFF blogger interview.), diane pernet donated one of her veils.
now we have a web of talent, beyond superficial, an interdisciplinary exchange subconsciously working together: the talents of an abstract lanvin, the tunes of doherty, and somewhere in the mix, french (a.v.h.) and english (vivienne westwood) couturiers clashing to create fashion with a brain, all apparently disperse, harmonizing to create a whole.
she did it right, her remarkable skills as a tailor play an important role of course, but it all comes down to... you guessed it.
i denied the banality of my profession... or maybe i felt like i had nothing else to repeat.
fashion has become such a repetitive cause of events and recycling of themes that tend to oscillate in the past. a big word usually learned in fashion school is zeitgeist, "fashion projects the zeitgeist". true, dressing mirrors our surrounding, our moment, the spot; so why look to the past? why not look to the future?...
i´m not referring to a kubrick future, i´m referring to a future that will tune us into our true necessities; those regarding our direction on this planet, the force connecting and impulsing our hearts and our minds towards an inevitable end.
existentialist as this may sound, death is our common certainty. so how do we move to say something worth saying? an endless quest, where we most likely will die not knowing a third of the answers, but in the meantime, we can try.
the unavoidable rhizome, the thread connecting us all.
a part from my usual quasi spiritual rants, (on the superficial note; which is just as important).. i concluded that i stopped posting fashion because for one, i stopped reading fashion magazines, i was extremely specific with what runway shows i wanted to see. they´re usually from 5 to 15, depends on the mood of the season.
these designers are a regular stop:
nicolas ghesquière
martin margiela
anne valérie hash
marios schwab
louise goldin
dries van noten
givenchy
haider ackermann
hussein chalayan
jil sander
rick owens
sophia kokosalaki
last seasons´alexander mcqueen blew my mind, beautifully mind "bottling".
today, out of curiosity, i checked out new york fashion week, an event i stopped following a while ago.
the correctly hyped duo, kate and laura mulleavy of rodarte were somewhat of a point of confusion. they mentioned they had taken a trip from el paso to marfa texas, picking up on visual inspiration. the post also spoke about them wanting to go back to their mexican roots, so they threw in fiestas de quinceañeras, ciudad juarez, and ladies working at maquiladoras... ¿qué? i truly doubt either one of these girls have been remotely close to experiencing the reality of their inspiration points, or even understanding them, not even i can fully understand.
ciudad juarez is one of the worlds most dangerous cities, i agree on making some sort of political stance to raise awareness, but their collection was far from that.
it sounds like a joke, between lace, knits, treated fabrics, and layers; the show looks native american slash mexican flea market.
it would have been much more relevant to pose this as inspiration.
and yes, we all know texas used to be mexico a long time ago, but now a day, texas is hardly considered mexico, or is even close to what mexico actually is.
to my surprise after i got over my confusion, as i was looking through haute couture spring/autumn 2010, i bumped into one of my all time fashion intrigues (this and margiela´s face).. the thing is that one of my all time favorite songs is add (n) to x´s, "take me to your leader" (i posted a while back).... so
one day i was reading visionaire, there was a retrospect on fashions most influential and avant garde designers, josephus thimister stuck to my brain.
he was creative director at balenciaga pre-ghesquière and part of the reason he had problems at the end of his run was for inviting add (n) to x to play at a runway show, making some guests get up and leave. this doesn´t sound as bold today, but back in the 90s and in the position balenciaga was in, almost bankrupt, there wasn´t much room for error.
today i discovered that after around a decade of absence, thimister has returned with a haute couture line. (i must admit i got excited looking at his name on the screen, this post is a clear giveaway.)
violence and opulence was the theme; characeristic knits, basic color palette, texture, richness, and elegance stepped out defining the simply sublime (the sublime is both combination of pain and beauty.)
ciudad juarez would have fit into this slot.
thimister is part of the deconstructivist belgians that graduated from the royal academy of fine arts in antwerp (late 80s early 90s), most of which have been constantly challenging the borders between all creative disciplines, collaborating with notorious figures, or non-notorious figures, revolutionizing fashion, questioning the reason we get up and get dressed every morning, and actually introducing, and setting forth a chain of events that inspire many, and set fashion at an intellectual and artistic level, most commercial brands and buyers, ignore.
i´m a bit of a snob when it comes to fashion, nothing seems to surprise me (confection, silhuette, and styling wise), seems like everything right? well no, before all that comes the idea. the conceptual development, 75.5% of idea will determine a collections success.
reader, now you may ask yourself, why are most commercial collections so successful? and michell answers, "because they feed off the good ideas".
the idea shapes and molds every fabric, every form, and every stitch.
it was a breath of fresh air taking a look at anne valérie hashs´ spring 2010 haute couture show. now the first question i asked myself before looking at her collection was "what is a.v.h. going to do up against giants like dior and chanel that spend tens of thousands on a single couture piece?"...
so she answered me and said, "i don´t want to be dior, chanel, or armani privé"...
ah the idea.
hash wrote to some of her closest friends asking them to donate a piece of their wardrobe.. she wrote to alber elbaz(i love him even if íf i´m not a huge lanvin fan he could easily be on my list), pete doherty, tilda swinton, jean paul gaultier, etc. now here´s a nice range of creatives to form part of your collection in some indirect way right?
... elbaz sent his pijamas (more love to him), doherty sent his jacket, and swinton a vivienne westwood t-shirt, among other collaborations... oh, and a recent visit we had to our city also contributed (with surprisingly good memory she remembered me from last years ASVOFF blogger interview.), diane pernet donated one of her veils.
now we have a web of talent, beyond superficial, an interdisciplinary exchange subconsciously working together: the talents of an abstract lanvin, the tunes of doherty, and somewhere in the mix, french (a.v.h.) and english (vivienne westwood) couturiers clashing to create fashion with a brain, all apparently disperse, harmonizing to create a whole.
she did it right, her remarkable skills as a tailor play an important role of course, but it all comes down to... you guessed it.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
urban surrealism: michael nyman
the story begins around 12 or so years ago, when i was about eleven.
visiting a newly rennovated embassy theater, after a couple of months that it had been temporarily closed. a huge affair... back in the 90s, or at least in san antonio, stadium seating was a big deal. the rich velvet fabric on the seats caught my eye, i remember this day so accurately because my older sisters´ boyfriend raúl, a colombian artist and guitar player, had on a wine colored velvet shirt that matched each row and the curtain over the screen.
the film was andrew niccol's gattaca.
i sat quietly as the movie played on, the photography and art direction are still irreprochable, for my age and understanding, i'd never seen anything quite like it, the burnt colors, the greens, the blues, the cross process effect the images had, that impeccable wardrobe, the architecture, the sixties aesthetics applied to the future..... the music. this day imprinted in my conscience/subconscience for the remaining years that have followed.
the music is what this whole post is about, and how what happened a couple of weeks ago ties into that autumn day.
how can melodic air be described?
the changing of the years, our minds evolution, all acting in an ephemeral state. it plays for an instant, it disappears in another, and then it comes back note by note, above and below and all around, inside each crevice, touching each pore. as claude debussy said, "music is the space between the notes." (dp)... so then music must be everything.
with this abstraction, comes the point to my poetic and maybe tedious text on "when i was a little girl i went to the movies".
"i think i always know everything except one thing, so that makes me infinetly ignorant... you can always subtract something from everything". i found this quote so intensely wise and beautifully abstract. that day has to start with this. the person who said this was the man who composed the score to gattaca, michael nyman.
i feel a bit strange and not to mention a bit ignorant tying this story to that particular film, but it´s still such a vivid memory that for me, this was the only beginning.
the date was january 28th, around 9pm, we were invited to a small get together at mr. nyman´s home, each of us were asked to bring food to accompany the evening.
i made:
asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with grain mustard and lemon sauce.
a asian pear, hearts of palm, baby corn, and jìcama salad, with a lemon/honey vinaigrette.
i called my mother (a pro on etiquette) and asked her if i should bring flowers, evidently i wasn´t sure, she said, "sí nena, es muy buen detalle llevar flores a una cena", so i did, i made the arragement out of purple cabbage flower, peach tree branches, dried berry branches, and this green and white flower i don´t know the name of... it was tied with ivory tulle, and champagne colored silk i had left over from my past collection.
mercedes (we owe this dinner to her), called me up and said, "michell, michael doesn´t have plates, can you take some"... i took the ceramic plates elena, mercedes, dea and i had bought on our trip to oaxaca.
i felt like martha stewart after that.
so we arrived, said hello and handed him the flowers, "lovely, thank you."
he gave us a tour of his house, some prepared ceviche in the kitchen, others poured mezcal, he offered us some wine, then we stood around the kitchen chatting, asking questions, talking about music, he mentioned something about mexican chill out... forty five minutes later we headed towards the dinning room.
the food was excellent, nath´s ceviche was amazing (nath´s peruvian), mercedes´s smoked tuna, pasta salad, my strange salad invention, etc... we relaxed and felt a bit more comfortable in the surrounding (only three out of ten of us had met michael previously).. so it turned out being somewhat of a question and answer night... we all listened.
he told us he had gotten into music thanks to a very good music teacher he had when he was a child...
someone asked if he had children, he joked and said, "yes i do have children and grandchildren... some of which are much older than all of you..."
...i also asked him about his recent collaboration with david mcalmont, and how it sounds so much different from other things he´s done...
the album is called the glare.. he commented that this project is somewhat of a collage of past and present projects, and that it´s one of his favorites.
we went upstairs and he played it for us...
that was the surreal part. he played THIS song which has a fragment from the gattaca soundtrack, we danced, talked, drank some more wine.
i complimented him on his don shoemaker furniture.
couldn´t resist the urge to ask him on his most commercial film, the one i mentioned before.. he said the film is beautifully executed, aesthetic wise, but that it didn´t rank on his top ten compositions... i insisted it was wonderful.
he went on saying that the piano was amazing, during the screenings, he must have seen it eleven times.
after the session michael suggested we go to a performance that was going on a couple of blocks away. so we went, had some more mezcal, continued chatting, and had a lovely night.
i once wrote that music is the paradoxical container to everything, music is the soul, music is the untouchable, intangible, invisible, the cathartic.
how can one actually describe the flow of feelings that linger as notes play on? after everything has been written on music, every word and sentiment, as accurate as it may "sound"... it all just falls short.
visiting a newly rennovated embassy theater, after a couple of months that it had been temporarily closed. a huge affair... back in the 90s, or at least in san antonio, stadium seating was a big deal. the rich velvet fabric on the seats caught my eye, i remember this day so accurately because my older sisters´ boyfriend raúl, a colombian artist and guitar player, had on a wine colored velvet shirt that matched each row and the curtain over the screen.
the film was andrew niccol's gattaca.
i sat quietly as the movie played on, the photography and art direction are still irreprochable, for my age and understanding, i'd never seen anything quite like it, the burnt colors, the greens, the blues, the cross process effect the images had, that impeccable wardrobe, the architecture, the sixties aesthetics applied to the future..... the music. this day imprinted in my conscience/subconscience for the remaining years that have followed.
the music is what this whole post is about, and how what happened a couple of weeks ago ties into that autumn day.
how can melodic air be described?
the changing of the years, our minds evolution, all acting in an ephemeral state. it plays for an instant, it disappears in another, and then it comes back note by note, above and below and all around, inside each crevice, touching each pore. as claude debussy said, "music is the space between the notes." (dp)... so then music must be everything.
with this abstraction, comes the point to my poetic and maybe tedious text on "when i was a little girl i went to the movies".
"i think i always know everything except one thing, so that makes me infinetly ignorant... you can always subtract something from everything". i found this quote so intensely wise and beautifully abstract. that day has to start with this. the person who said this was the man who composed the score to gattaca, michael nyman.
i feel a bit strange and not to mention a bit ignorant tying this story to that particular film, but it´s still such a vivid memory that for me, this was the only beginning.
the date was january 28th, around 9pm, we were invited to a small get together at mr. nyman´s home, each of us were asked to bring food to accompany the evening.
i made:
asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with grain mustard and lemon sauce.
a asian pear, hearts of palm, baby corn, and jìcama salad, with a lemon/honey vinaigrette.
i called my mother (a pro on etiquette) and asked her if i should bring flowers, evidently i wasn´t sure, she said, "sí nena, es muy buen detalle llevar flores a una cena", so i did, i made the arragement out of purple cabbage flower, peach tree branches, dried berry branches, and this green and white flower i don´t know the name of... it was tied with ivory tulle, and champagne colored silk i had left over from my past collection.
mercedes (we owe this dinner to her), called me up and said, "michell, michael doesn´t have plates, can you take some"... i took the ceramic plates elena, mercedes, dea and i had bought on our trip to oaxaca.
i felt like martha stewart after that.
so we arrived, said hello and handed him the flowers, "lovely, thank you."
he gave us a tour of his house, some prepared ceviche in the kitchen, others poured mezcal, he offered us some wine, then we stood around the kitchen chatting, asking questions, talking about music, he mentioned something about mexican chill out... forty five minutes later we headed towards the dinning room.
the food was excellent, nath´s ceviche was amazing (nath´s peruvian), mercedes´s smoked tuna, pasta salad, my strange salad invention, etc... we relaxed and felt a bit more comfortable in the surrounding (only three out of ten of us had met michael previously).. so it turned out being somewhat of a question and answer night... we all listened.
he told us he had gotten into music thanks to a very good music teacher he had when he was a child...
someone asked if he had children, he joked and said, "yes i do have children and grandchildren... some of which are much older than all of you..."
...i also asked him about his recent collaboration with david mcalmont, and how it sounds so much different from other things he´s done...
the album is called the glare.. he commented that this project is somewhat of a collage of past and present projects, and that it´s one of his favorites.
we went upstairs and he played it for us...
that was the surreal part. he played THIS song which has a fragment from the gattaca soundtrack, we danced, talked, drank some more wine.
i complimented him on his don shoemaker furniture.
couldn´t resist the urge to ask him on his most commercial film, the one i mentioned before.. he said the film is beautifully executed, aesthetic wise, but that it didn´t rank on his top ten compositions... i insisted it was wonderful.
he went on saying that the piano was amazing, during the screenings, he must have seen it eleven times.
after the session michael suggested we go to a performance that was going on a couple of blocks away. so we went, had some more mezcal, continued chatting, and had a lovely night.
i once wrote that music is the paradoxical container to everything, music is the soul, music is the untouchable, intangible, invisible, the cathartic.
how can one actually describe the flow of feelings that linger as notes play on? after everything has been written on music, every word and sentiment, as accurate as it may "sound"... it all just falls short.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
high school egoism
Used to be one of the rotten ones and he liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and he liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back.
Can't you come back?
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under your breath.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under your breath.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under your breath.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under my window.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone.
Park that car, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone.
Park that car, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and he liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back.
Can't you come back?
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under your breath.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under your breath.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under your breath.
Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash, under my window.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone.
Park that car, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone.
Park that car, dream about me.
Park that car, drop that phone.
Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.
Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back.
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