In Code Workshop II
,2016
«Look Therapy. de/recoding Identities» 07.11. – 11.11.2016
Subcultures are defined as movements which are based on particular sets of features of appearance, costume and adornment that make its members distinctive enough to be a clear part of a wider culture. Their rules and codes strongly relate to (pro/anti-)social, (pro/anti-)cultural and (pro/anti-)political standpoints that not only shape their visual identity but could be considered to go as far as even shaping the body itself in its way of behaviour and postures. Subcultures are cultural constructions that affect not only the fashion part of their adherents’ lives, but all aspects that connect to the notion of life and visual communication through our bodies. The Look, precisely arranged and defined by its super-sharp codes becomes the Uniform, shifting between individuality and group-appeal.
«Obviously, there are no subcultures to be discovered anymore, at least not in the Western world. It’s more about the remix of information. Kids today — the new generation — they think in different ways. They don’t even have the knowledge of what a subculture is. It is not relevant to them. If they want to wear a punk shirt, that doesn’t mean that they have to listen to punk music or have a political point of view. They don’t have that mentality. In my generation, when we were grunge, we were grunge. It was a mind-set. That’s why today I am so interested in the different codes of social uniforms.» Interview with Lotta Volkova
Because of our digital interconnectivity, the velocity of images flickering before our eyes teach us to see a lot but often only to glimpse it on a surface level. There is no time to stop, go deeper and understand what one is truly seeing. Only the eyes are traveling, the mind stays where it is.
Learning to look carefully and deliberately is learning to decode what one is looking at.
«Look therapy» reflects upon lost codes, rewashed and faded out in the internet. Together we deconstruct, re-arrange and capture the details of «subcultural uniforms» in order to fit our unequal and diverse bodies, composing a «soon to be released» series of recoded images in fashion.
