[-empyre-] Extension on Sabela's text

[Michele Danjoux]

Hello All,

I am fascinated by these discussions and feel that I can now interject and extend this notion of (shared) identity and self through body modification (Sabela) to also include dress as further extension. The 70's and 80's were indeed interesting times where social movements influenced the emergence of new sub-cultures and visual and sonic expressions of shared identities- fuelled by political and academic debate of the time. Beliefs systems adorned bodies and skins - in addition to body modifications such as tattooing, specific items of clothing were adopted and often customised to achieve the desired attitude of wearing and crafting of identity. 

Also in the 1970’s on the streets of London came the rise of black power and black consciousness. Men and women began to wear African tops and debates on black identity were similarly expressed through dress and styling with natural Afro hairstyles also enjoyed. (How different from today’s de rigueur straightening of unruly locks in the capital city of Kenya (inspiring such products as Nairobi Hair Relaxer) to achieve that chic and desired urban look). 

The body is central to the urban space, the clothed and adorned body, the naked body, the absent body where only bones and cloth remain (reference to Ana's post)
 Bradley Quinn in his book The Fashion of Architecture, Fashioning the Metropolis says:

“Clothes, being the form in which the fashioned body is made visible, give the wearer a public identity while fostering the construction of the self.”



Kind Regards,
Michele


-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of Ana Valdés
Sent: Tue 3/20/2012 1:05 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] translation of Sabela's text
 
The actual extended practice of the tattoing has their roots of the
emergency of the urban tribes, associated with the movements around rock
music and punk in the 70:s and 80:s.

A selfinflicted sign of identity, traditionally the different uses of
tattoin has been linked with rites de passage, initiation rites, belonging,
hierachies or stigmatization. In this forum I shared the experience of the
MAPI Museum, to try of expose the link between these practices and the
bodypainting of differen indigenous communities, both actual as old and
other kind of intervention showable in faces and bodies, very similar to
our time's piercings, pendants and more aggresive interventions implicating
deformating and appendixes.

The incorporation of different tendences in the clothing, hair,
facepainting and "attitude" of the urban tribes show a disconformity
regarding the mainstream conventions of uses and fashion. This
disconformity walk around the streets; their shelter is the appereance, it
gives the implicite etablishing of collectives which interchange don't seem
have other meaning than the gests and models of behaviour tending to
accentuate the difference with the rest of people. These colletives impose
upon the urban landscape a kind of movement in different times.