"something about liminality"

From Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida

The portrait photograph is a closed field of forces. Four image-repertories intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am (or let myself be) photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity, sometimes of imposture (comparable to certain nightmares). In terms of image repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents the very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object

I like to have my picture taken in part because I like to look at pictures of other people. Intense voyeurism is part of my intense attraction (addiction) to the internet. The relationship of voyeurism to exhibitionism in this particular dynamic of public photos produces a self-negating self-awareness. Anyone who uses facebook in order to do more than just "keep in touch" knows that the best photos involve the least amount of trying on the subject's part (despite what Tyra Banks may try to tell me every season on Top Model). To truly not "try" however, one would have to be minimally aware of having their picture taken, or rather, minimally aware of the photograph's potential final outcome. Thus one who appreciates this quality in photographs of others could never achieve it in a photograph of themselves. Photos that I like of myself are often photos in which I am either caught nearly entirely unawares or flouting the rules of portraiture by refusing to make any face or making as ugly a face as possible.

The above picture was a difficult situation for me. Tiffany wanted to take my picture and I did not want my picture taken at all. It was close to finals and I was tired and not wearing any make-up and I think I may have said the words "Don't take my picture right now, I feel ugly" in a blasé way that could easily be seen as disturbing. It wasn't a whine, or a cry for help (or a fish for compliments), it was a fact as I understood it and I think this is often hard for people to process when it comes to girls vis-à-vis their appearances. While I have come to more or less accept my face without eye-makeup, a habit I've been in since age thirteen, I still prefer to have it on. It has come to be an essential part of myself, I have convinced myself that my face looks a certain way that it in fact doesn't. The disjuncture between my state-of-mind in moments like the one at the time of this photograph and moments when I truly felt pretty was a source of distress for me in high school. It is because I took both those types of moments as a kind of truth. When I had a pretty day I didn't look pretty but I was pretty. Yet most of my days, I felt, were not pretty days and thus how could an ugly girl have pretty days at all?

Tiffany told me it was okay if I covered my face while she took the pictures. I now see that the attraction to the situation was the light more than anything. Yet as a picture of me, I love it. I have evaded every rule of a good picture--I have even evaded the definition of portrait--yet I did not have to make a blank or ugly face and thus went around my normal modes of evasion. In not showing my face there is a refusal to be captured, yet the act of refusal and the reasoning behind that refusal, in conjunction with the pose and tell-tale favorite shirt, signifies myself in all respects. It is vulnerability shown through a defense against being vulnerable. It looks like a film still of a film I have no recollection of.

k.e.

The Urban Dandy

ts.

argyle socks (and little else, maybe with a book)

ts.

Tom Proustington Interview #2

Age: 21
Home town: Hong Kong
Current occupation: arse

I'm wearing a sweater that I wear everyday. It was given to me from Nicole, with whom I learned much about devotion: how to love God, and how to receive the love of God (agape). I learned from her companionship that there is a religious sensibility that one need not give up on in spite of the joke that is the current state of religion today. (As it turns out, reading Kierkegaard is the key...) A nun gave Nicole that sweater, and she transferred it to me. I've gradually developed a very personal relationship with this item of clothing - it gives me spiritual strength to live on and face each day anew, to pass through this world without judgment or prejudice.

P.S.

Dress Rhythm

In this video, my dad is asking me what I want for dinner as he gets ready for work. Putting on the jacket is quite a fluid but very meticulous process. First, he takes his coat by the collar and lifts it from the back of the chair where it was hanging. Then, propping the right sleeve open with his left hand, he slides his right arm in. Finding the other arm hole behind him, he swings his arms forward so his jacket falls into place. He pulls the lapels together to button the jacket, and as he does so, inhales to shrink his gut for a moment. Naturally, he leaves the bottom button undone. All of this happens within a few seconds and with the habitual familiarity with not only the action itself but also with the blazer itself. 

ts.

(rebuttal)(rebuttal)

You propose a transcultural brand. Your concept is based on several premises: (1) ‘brands,’ as we know them, have national identities (2) each national identity has its own unique aesthetic (3) a transnational identity exists and therefore (4) said transcultural identity merits a unique aesthetic, i.e. a ‘brand.’ I agree with your logic but am yet unsure whether a transcultural style is, indeed, possible.

The reason: I can’t help but see culture (and cultural production) as inextricably linked to place. Attempting to evade, or transcend, or avoid, the natural and cultural barriers that distinguish one locality form the next (geospatial, linguistic, political) seems dangerously ‘unearthly.’ It seems unearthly in the way that multinational corporations seem unearthly, transcending cultural barriers and in doing so muting, or deadening local cultures. I worry that in creating a brand that transcends national identity we will inadvertently advance the ‘monocultural’ ideal and thereby detract from rather than augment what you call the transcultural identity.

Whether or not we identify as transcultural, our sense of the ‘local’ is undoubtedly in flux. It now hinges less on our geospatial position and more on our level of connectedness, on the amount of time we spend online, communicating. We may not know our neighbors or vote in our local elections, but we certainly do belong to a ‘social network,’ or several. The question that remains is this: What form will ‘cultural production’ take in these placeless localities? What form will a transcultural brand take?

m.c.

boyish charm pt 2: a lesson in uncool

k.e.

Tom Proustington Interview #1

Name: Andrew
Age: Old
Home town: Old Shanghai
Current occupation: People influencer

I found that the questions that you've put forward are very hard for me to form an opinion on, but I appreciate that you consider me as a style icon.

I have a special love of suede, whether it is a jacket or a pair of shoes, it's always my favorite. I used to have this suede jacket about 25-30 years ago in a dark brown color and I wore it for quite a long time. We all know that suede is hard to keep especially in moist climates (Editor's note: Andrew lives in Hong Kong). But I managed to maintain it quite well. However, I lost that jacket - moving houses perhaps. Then years ago, about 6 years, I was told that I could tailor-make it again with Dunhill, and I spent quite some money and time invested in this jacket. Unfortunately, it was so badly made that it didn't fit me at all, but I accepted it anyway and have worn it until today.

A few days ago, I was at the Dunhill shop and I found that for the Spring collection they have that same suede jacket again, and this time it was ready made. I especially like ready-made jackets, because you can try it and if you like it you can just pay for it and take it. But I tried it on, and it didn't fit me at all so I declined this time.

I hope that I will have a suede jacket once again, but I am not desperate for it now.

Tom Proustington Questionnaire

The following is a questionnaire we sent out to various people. We asked them to fill out the first part in full and then to pick one of the thirteen questions to write a short anecdote in response.

Name:
Age:
Home town:
Current occupation:

What is your favorite article of clothing that you own and why?
What article(s) of clothing do you most covet on a friend of the same sex?
What qualities of dress do you most admire in a member of the opposite sex?
Who are your fashion icons of fiction?
Who are fashion icons in real life?
What articles of clothing do you most associate with your childhood?
Under what circumstances do you put effort into your dress?
What articles of clothing do you most associate with past lovers/love interests?
When do you feel worst in your clothing?
When do you feel best in your clothing?
Explain what you’re wearing right now:
Describe the outfit of the last person you saw that you felt attracted to:
Describe the people in high school whose dress you wanted to emulate:

girlish charm

ts.

Part. Deux. (Longing and Belonging)

I dream of a style that is resonant and intelligible across different cultures, but itself embodying cultural versatility. One that is unbound by any one culture, but afforded a mobility between two or across several. If a national identity with its own unique aesthetic can be formed, it seems logical that a transnational one exists or can at least be imagined. In other words, if by definition transnational identity is between departure and assimilation and about elusiveness and contradiction - can a markedly transnational style be possible? Marketable even? To dress the part of a global cosmopolitan is pretty easy, but no one brand explicitly markets that. Every one makes its place of origin known, such that chances are besides knowing any given brand's name, you also know where it comes from. This is the power of branding, and it also strikes me as the earnestness and pervasiveness of national pride. Transnational identity has yet to be fully understood or even seen as legitimate in the political sense, much less digested and evolved as culture. There must, however, already be a common, hybridized albeit even paradoxical aesthetic voice that threads through this globalized space that runs alongside this stream of people shuttling back and forth. The market is there and maybe one such aesthetic already exists (I already have my suspicions), but it has yet to be fully severed from its origins and made conscious of as a distinctly transcultural object, as a transcultural brand. For now though, beyond only just learning to understand the transcultural experience as an insoluble melancholia and perpetual longing, I can only hope to know it further by dress. Perhaps only then can I truly know my own condition, when I can call it by its name and recognize it by sight. For now though, I cannot fully dress the part.

ts.

get out of my mind

k.e.

The Politics of Longing and Belonging

"The Others," article from The Economist, Dec. 17 2009

...Beware, then: however well you carry it off, however much you enjoy it, there is a dangerous undertow to being a foreigner, even a genteel foreigner. Somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastasises over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia. And nostalgia has much in common with the Freudian idea of melancholia—a continuing, debilitating sense of loss, somewhere within which lies anger at the thing lost. It is not the possibility of returning home which feeds nostalgia, but the impossibility of it. Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-born intellectual resettled in France, has caught this sense of deprivation by comparing the experience of foreignness with the loss of a mother.

But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.

ts.