Hussein Chalayan

[swami]

/\ funny, i view this as progress in a way. i don't see how this could be viewed as degeneration. can you elaborate? do you mean that the face remains covered and thus only the body is objectified?

I had to watch the video to make more sense of it. The girls come out on stage one at a time arriving naked and then gradually completely covered. So in essence it starts pure and unadulterated and ends up with the women being entirely covered in the ABAYA.
So a degeneration of the women taking her from a natural state of beauty to a forced ignorant state where she has been reduced to an object of lust that has to covered up to maintain her dignity.Instead of a graudal progression celebrating the independence and progress of the female kind.

IMHO

[Faust]

Oh, that makes total sense. I was looking at it from left to right, lol.

[swami]

Oh, that makes total sense. I was looking at it from left to right, lol.

I figured as much ! Though, Left to right could work eventually in 3000??

[Faust]

If we don't blow the world up before that...

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Isn't it noticeable that the "pure and unadulterated" is a masked one?





Sorry, I had to use imagevenue for these ones.

[swami]

Good Call BI! But that might be subjective too, Iam always open to looking at things with a new light But I assumed it was to not put a face to the individual but make her representative of society as a whole?

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Yes, the face as a structural representation covering the head
(the top of the body), an immediate recognition of the subject,
separating it from the body. It could be through the additions
Chalayan does to the face through this collection, we are seeing
the head, or small landscapes instead of recognizable subjects,
much like the close-ups in a Leone or Bergman film.

The use of the Abaya, is difficult, as it's filled with religious
meaning, but is it Chalayans project to judge here?

More thoughts please, it's interesting.

[Faust]

More thoughts please, it's interesting.

To me it reminded how the Soviets eradicated Islam in 1920s by encouraging the women to burn their burkas. That's why this presentation evoked progress.

[laika]

The use of the Abaya, is difficult, as it's filled with religious
meaning, but is it Chalayans project to judge here?

More thoughts please, it's interesting.

I think it would be too literal to read a judgement into this or even to see it as a comment on the chador. Chalayan's anthropology is always very abstract and theoretical, imo, even though it comes out of a very politically and culturally charged atmosphere.

I don't think the show is about additions or progress, but about negations. As in the negative spaces between the confined arms and the body; and the cut-outs that reveal, through the medium of the garment, the negative space that surrounds each individual body. This negative space is also a space inbetween, which Chalayan re-emphasises and extends outwards through the use of mirrors that surround the model's faces. The models turn to face each other and see themselves displaced, but also reflected in the mirror of the other. I think I remember reading somewhere that the audience would have also been implicated in this mirroring. Watching themselves watching the models.

I read the end, the increasing covering over with the chador, as an increasing negation of the individual body by clothing. Or more broadly, as the near obliteration of individual identity by culture. The painting of the face suggests there is another level of complexity still, but i'm not entirely sure how to understand it yet.

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

I think it would be too literal to read a judgement into this or even to see it as a comment on the chador. Chalayan's anthropology is always very abstract and theoretical, imo, even though it comes out of a very politically and culturally charged atmosphere.

I don't think the show is about additions or progress, but about negations. As in the negative spaces between the confined arms and the body; and the cut-outs that reveal, through the medium of the garment, the negative space that surrounds each individual body. This negative space is also a space inbetween, which Chalayan re-emphasises and extends outwards through the use of mirrors that surround the model's faces. The models turn to face each other and see themselves displaced, but also reflected in the mirror of the other. I think I remember reading somewhere that the audience would have also been implicated in this mirroring. Watching themselves watching the models.

I read the end, the increasing covering over with the chador, as an increasing negation of the individual body by clothing. Or more broadly, as the near obliteration of individual identity by culture. The painting of the face suggests there is another level of complexity still, but i'm not entirely sure how to understand it yet.

In turn would that not restore a direct self-awareness to the body,
as this can only be done by showing the body in its limitations?
As Deleuzian as I am, one of the most important functions of art
today.

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Geotropics Spring/Summer 1999
sponsored by the Arcadia Group

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Echoform Autumn/Winter 1999
Sponsored by the Arcadia Group