A monoculture upstaged
Sep. 28th, 2009 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus1. These are my observations after a week spent in Madrid and Paris. They concern the visual. My basic theme is that I, personally, am only excited, visually, by the street spectacle, the habitus, of... well, let's employ, just for fun, a hideous acronym for the people I'm talking about. Let's call them the NANI: the non-assimilated non-indigeous.
2. The story so far: ten years ago I might have come back from a trip to Madrid and Paris raving about a "cybercafé" or a conveyor-belt sushi bar. These days, I really only respond positively to immigrant districts, and this is probably because I feel the real action is happening elsewhere, in the populous places these NANI immigrants hail from: Africa, India, the Far East.
3. I'll say it loud and I'll say it clear: we in moribund old Europe are lucky to have Indians, Africans and Muslims in our cities. Left to its own devices, our own culture will only get older, fatter, uglier, slower and more complacent, with more selfish cynicism and bigger walls.
4. But let's get back to the purely visual. Here is a picture of what white Europeans look like. These are people in a reading room at FNAC, a culture superstore in central Madrid selling books, CDs, DVDs, computers, game software, phones.
5. Now, it's wonderful that these people want to read, and wonderful that FNAC gives them the space to do that without necessarily purchasing anything, like a reference library. I use this photo simply to show you that these people mostly wear jeans, white-ish t-shirts, and white-ish trainers. They wear, in other words, the voluntary but universal uniform of "the monoculture".
6. When generalised -- on a street, for instance, or at an airport -- this uniform blurs into a gun-metal blue glow. It speaks of a cold and hard but casual and convenience-fixated culture, one which puts aesthetics rather low on its list of priorities.
7. To really see our gun-metal blue culture in context as a thing-in-itself you need to estrange it, make it distinct, isolate it. You can do this by visiting an ethnographic museum (like Madrid's National Anthropology Museum, in which the above photos are displayed). Here you will see traditional cultures which the gun-metal blue culture has sent en voie de disparition, just as it has endangered the diversity of animals and the diversity of languages spoken.
8. If you're like me, you will have the following thoughts in the anthropology museum. One: "Our way really is not the only way to organise human life." Two: "Nor is it necessarily the best way." Three: "Wow, this stuff is so beautiful!"
9. If you are, furthermore, the kind of person who goes to art biennials, you might happen to stop by the 10th Lyon Biennial (or at least its website) and read this statement by Chinese curator Hou Hanru: "We are living in the society of the spectacle. In spite of its alienating effects on our life and social relationships, it’s one of the very fundamental conditions of our existence. We perceive the world and communicate with each other through the spectacle – a system of image production and representation dominated by the logic of market capitalism which tends to “develop” our faculties of perception, imagination and reflection towards a “one dimensional model” formatted by the language of consumerist ideology. This is also the very contemporary condition of our self-identification and social order “guaranteed” by the established power system."
10. The Calle de Fuencarral is a tree-lined, semi-pedestrianised alley bisecting from the north Madrid's main thoroughfare (its "Oxford Street"), the Calle Gran Via. It's bounded by some sketchy areas where drug-dealing and prostitution thrive, but the Calle de Fuencarral itself incarnates "funky youth capitalism" in a chic, glossy package. Alongside tattoo and piercing parlours, hip graffiti and skateboard stores, you'll find familiar international monocultural marks: Camper, Lois, G-Star, Muji, Puma, Diesel. As if culminating in the grand-daddy of all monocultural marks, the funky part of the street terminates at a gigantic McDonalds.
11. Now, in my sideline career as a consumer-slash-design journalist (I date this career from 2004 to 2008) I would probably have had to rummage around amongst the brands on the Calle de Fuencarral in order to find something to celebrate. In fact, I did: last year I blogged about Muji for the New York Times. And one reason I put 2008 as the termination date for this sideline career is that I have found it increasingly difficult to find anything to be enthusiastic about in this supposedly-funky, supposedly-hip, supposedly cutting-edge culture, which is simply the monoculture's consumerist training wheels, and which does indeed culminate in McDonalds.
12. Let's switch to Paris. Did you know that the current show at the Cartier Foundation is celebrating graffiti, tagging, and street art? I didn't go, because graffiti, tagging and street art, especially as bought into (in the name of "inclusiveness") by bling culture and the fashion world bores me to tears.
13. And did you know that Takashi Murakami, whose designs for Louis Vuitton bags both poked fun at and celebrated the bling-spectacle-monoculture (cake and eat it!) is showing his self-portraits and flower paintings at Perrotin? His self-portraits are bad (Murakami as childish cartoon of himself, Murakami reductio ad absurdum) but his flower pieces in the back room are quite nice. Everything costs millions, naturally. Bling bling bling bling bling bling "bling". Wink.
14. I went to Colette. Colette bores me to tears too now. Their fashion floor features the same old black "designer" clothes it always has. Black black black black black! With bling prices! At the back, they've leased a few cubic metres to Uniqlo, who are opening a big store in Paris soon. Uniqlo -- whose clothes are some of the most boring, monocultural cotton and denim factory rags in the world (but are at least cheap) -- gets some sort of brand-establishing prestige out of being seen in Colette, and Colette gets, well, lots of money for renting them the space that used to house their quite-good art bookshop.
15. Here is a Spanish woman in trad Spanish clothes, someone I saw on the street in a not-yet-cleaned up district of Madrid, near the El Rastro market. She has a black shawl and a red flamenco dress. She is not wearing Gap or Uniqlo, please note. This world would not be a better place if she were.
16. Thank Christ for the Muslims! Here are some veiled women waiting at the lights in Le Marais, Paris.
17. And here are the two most elegantly-dressed people I saw in Paris, a city reputedly full of elegantly-dressed people, yet actually only living up to that claim in its vital, vibrant immigrant quarters:
18. The pink and white outfit is wonderful, especially seen in a 19th century arcade. The blue robe in the phone box is top-to-toe gorgeous; the blue of a hot blue coral sea. Why can you not buy hot blue coral sea robes at Colette? Because everything in Colette is black, or gun-metal-stroke-denim blue. Unlike the Indians on the Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis (with their amazing colour sense), we do not do colour. Or if we do, we do it only in our kids' clothes, the ones you see in MiLK magazine, the only French fashion magazine that still impresses me.
19. The town of Toledo impressed me, though. You know, the monoculture may think it's big and tough and all, but it's upstaged on all sides. It's upstaged by its own past, by the children who represent its future, by the economic migrants on its margins, by the traditional cultures it habitually crushes, by its own exported and outsourced production facilities, by the uniforms of its menials, and by its abject and its homeless. And while these categories of people upstage the monoculture in beauty and interest, its own engines and supports (its banking system, for instance) buckle and collapse beneath it.
20. The most exciting visual culture thing I saw all week, I think, was the Senegalese beauty touts crowding the exit of the Chateau D'Eau metro station in Paris. When black women come up the stairs of the metro, the touts entreat them (very much hands-on) to come to their own particular hair salon. It's strident and competitive, men begging women, flirting with them, flattering even the fat and ugly ones. The women smile, demur, sometimes agree. At first sight it looks like outrageous sexual harrassment, but it's simply a culture-within-a-culture, a little urban ritual for a people almost insanely dedicated to beauty.
[Error: unknown template video]
21. Next to the Senegalese hair parlours there are Korean nail salons. Black women go there to get their nails done by Korean women. It's a well-known fact that only someone of your own culture and race can understand how to beautify your hair, but that only Asians really know how to beautify your nails.
22. You know, when it's Senegalese getting their nails done in Paris by South Koreans, the whole NANI thing breaks down. Who's more indigenous than whom? Who's more assimilated, and to whom? It doesn't really matter any more. The hub is forgotten, the centre cannot hold, and for that let us dance a joyful logobi.
2. The story so far: ten years ago I might have come back from a trip to Madrid and Paris raving about a "cybercafé" or a conveyor-belt sushi bar. These days, I really only respond positively to immigrant districts, and this is probably because I feel the real action is happening elsewhere, in the populous places these NANI immigrants hail from: Africa, India, the Far East.
3. I'll say it loud and I'll say it clear: we in moribund old Europe are lucky to have Indians, Africans and Muslims in our cities. Left to its own devices, our own culture will only get older, fatter, uglier, slower and more complacent, with more selfish cynicism and bigger walls.
4. But let's get back to the purely visual. Here is a picture of what white Europeans look like. These are people in a reading room at FNAC, a culture superstore in central Madrid selling books, CDs, DVDs, computers, game software, phones.
5. Now, it's wonderful that these people want to read, and wonderful that FNAC gives them the space to do that without necessarily purchasing anything, like a reference library. I use this photo simply to show you that these people mostly wear jeans, white-ish t-shirts, and white-ish trainers. They wear, in other words, the voluntary but universal uniform of "the monoculture".
6. When generalised -- on a street, for instance, or at an airport -- this uniform blurs into a gun-metal blue glow. It speaks of a cold and hard but casual and convenience-fixated culture, one which puts aesthetics rather low on its list of priorities.
7. To really see our gun-metal blue culture in context as a thing-in-itself you need to estrange it, make it distinct, isolate it. You can do this by visiting an ethnographic museum (like Madrid's National Anthropology Museum, in which the above photos are displayed). Here you will see traditional cultures which the gun-metal blue culture has sent en voie de disparition, just as it has endangered the diversity of animals and the diversity of languages spoken.
8. If you're like me, you will have the following thoughts in the anthropology museum. One: "Our way really is not the only way to organise human life." Two: "Nor is it necessarily the best way." Three: "Wow, this stuff is so beautiful!"
9. If you are, furthermore, the kind of person who goes to art biennials, you might happen to stop by the 10th Lyon Biennial (or at least its website) and read this statement by Chinese curator Hou Hanru: "We are living in the society of the spectacle. In spite of its alienating effects on our life and social relationships, it’s one of the very fundamental conditions of our existence. We perceive the world and communicate with each other through the spectacle – a system of image production and representation dominated by the logic of market capitalism which tends to “develop” our faculties of perception, imagination and reflection towards a “one dimensional model” formatted by the language of consumerist ideology. This is also the very contemporary condition of our self-identification and social order “guaranteed” by the established power system."
10. The Calle de Fuencarral is a tree-lined, semi-pedestrianised alley bisecting from the north Madrid's main thoroughfare (its "Oxford Street"), the Calle Gran Via. It's bounded by some sketchy areas where drug-dealing and prostitution thrive, but the Calle de Fuencarral itself incarnates "funky youth capitalism" in a chic, glossy package. Alongside tattoo and piercing parlours, hip graffiti and skateboard stores, you'll find familiar international monocultural marks: Camper, Lois, G-Star, Muji, Puma, Diesel. As if culminating in the grand-daddy of all monocultural marks, the funky part of the street terminates at a gigantic McDonalds.
11. Now, in my sideline career as a consumer-slash-design journalist (I date this career from 2004 to 2008) I would probably have had to rummage around amongst the brands on the Calle de Fuencarral in order to find something to celebrate. In fact, I did: last year I blogged about Muji for the New York Times. And one reason I put 2008 as the termination date for this sideline career is that I have found it increasingly difficult to find anything to be enthusiastic about in this supposedly-funky, supposedly-hip, supposedly cutting-edge culture, which is simply the monoculture's consumerist training wheels, and which does indeed culminate in McDonalds.
12. Let's switch to Paris. Did you know that the current show at the Cartier Foundation is celebrating graffiti, tagging, and street art? I didn't go, because graffiti, tagging and street art, especially as bought into (in the name of "inclusiveness") by bling culture and the fashion world bores me to tears.
13. And did you know that Takashi Murakami, whose designs for Louis Vuitton bags both poked fun at and celebrated the bling-spectacle-monoculture (cake and eat it!) is showing his self-portraits and flower paintings at Perrotin? His self-portraits are bad (Murakami as childish cartoon of himself, Murakami reductio ad absurdum) but his flower pieces in the back room are quite nice. Everything costs millions, naturally. Bling bling bling bling bling bling "bling". Wink.
14. I went to Colette. Colette bores me to tears too now. Their fashion floor features the same old black "designer" clothes it always has. Black black black black black! With bling prices! At the back, they've leased a few cubic metres to Uniqlo, who are opening a big store in Paris soon. Uniqlo -- whose clothes are some of the most boring, monocultural cotton and denim factory rags in the world (but are at least cheap) -- gets some sort of brand-establishing prestige out of being seen in Colette, and Colette gets, well, lots of money for renting them the space that used to house their quite-good art bookshop.
15. Here is a Spanish woman in trad Spanish clothes, someone I saw on the street in a not-yet-cleaned up district of Madrid, near the El Rastro market. She has a black shawl and a red flamenco dress. She is not wearing Gap or Uniqlo, please note. This world would not be a better place if she were.
16. Thank Christ for the Muslims! Here are some veiled women waiting at the lights in Le Marais, Paris.
17. And here are the two most elegantly-dressed people I saw in Paris, a city reputedly full of elegantly-dressed people, yet actually only living up to that claim in its vital, vibrant immigrant quarters:
18. The pink and white outfit is wonderful, especially seen in a 19th century arcade. The blue robe in the phone box is top-to-toe gorgeous; the blue of a hot blue coral sea. Why can you not buy hot blue coral sea robes at Colette? Because everything in Colette is black, or gun-metal-stroke-denim blue. Unlike the Indians on the Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis (with their amazing colour sense), we do not do colour. Or if we do, we do it only in our kids' clothes, the ones you see in MiLK magazine, the only French fashion magazine that still impresses me.
19. The town of Toledo impressed me, though. You know, the monoculture may think it's big and tough and all, but it's upstaged on all sides. It's upstaged by its own past, by the children who represent its future, by the economic migrants on its margins, by the traditional cultures it habitually crushes, by its own exported and outsourced production facilities, by the uniforms of its menials, and by its abject and its homeless. And while these categories of people upstage the monoculture in beauty and interest, its own engines and supports (its banking system, for instance) buckle and collapse beneath it.
20. The most exciting visual culture thing I saw all week, I think, was the Senegalese beauty touts crowding the exit of the Chateau D'Eau metro station in Paris. When black women come up the stairs of the metro, the touts entreat them (very much hands-on) to come to their own particular hair salon. It's strident and competitive, men begging women, flirting with them, flattering even the fat and ugly ones. The women smile, demur, sometimes agree. At first sight it looks like outrageous sexual harrassment, but it's simply a culture-within-a-culture, a little urban ritual for a people almost insanely dedicated to beauty.
[Error: unknown template video]
21. Next to the Senegalese hair parlours there are Korean nail salons. Black women go there to get their nails done by Korean women. It's a well-known fact that only someone of your own culture and race can understand how to beautify your hair, but that only Asians really know how to beautify your nails.
22. You know, when it's Senegalese getting their nails done in Paris by South Koreans, the whole NANI thing breaks down. Who's more indigenous than whom? Who's more assimilated, and to whom? It doesn't really matter any more. The hub is forgotten, the centre cannot hold, and for that let us dance a joyful logobi.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 09:18 pm (UTC)A problem from above, though:
"Left to its own devices, our own culture will only get older, fatter, uglier, slower and more complacent, with more selfish cynicism and bigger walls."
Of course, Anglo cultures by no means have a monopoly on these traits. (In fact, you could be describing Japan itself these days). It's an inclination of the species, I'm afraid. Particularly in so-called capitalist cultures.
Finally, living in Silicon Valley, one is delighted to see, on a daily basis, roving bands of Eritreans in full garb, hords of be-saried Hyderabadians and any number of other colorful peoples in colorful threads, beautifying the scene. The only problem is they're all shopping like crazy themselves, furiously outconsuming even the caucasians (which are a minority, in fact, and a welcomed fact it is, speaking as one myself) without a care in the world. Indeed, this kind of johnny-come-lately neocapitalist center cannot hold, either.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 09:39 pm (UTC)By the way, the pink dresses the Penquo girls are wearing in the photo are also Turkish, and from our local market. They're kind of tunic dresses, possibly bridesmaid dresses.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 09:43 pm (UTC)I think I'll blog soon about the make-do and mend idea. I spent quite a while in Paris trying to find a craftsman who could fix my old leather satchel, whose strap is broken. I like the idea of mending beloved old things rather than buying new ones, but sometimes it takes a lot of dedication. I did find a cordonnier who tried to fix the bag, but failed.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 10:14 pm (UTC)The really interesting thing about the times we're now entering is that the immigrants don't just win in some sort of consolation-prize way (they may not have money, but they have soul). They are actually starting to win economically too; the future belongs to the Indians and the Chinese.
Wahabi-sabi?
Date: 2009-09-27 10:40 pm (UTC)Now that I think of it everyone should have a well-worn copy of Koren's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Wabi-Sabi-Artists-Designers-Poets-Philosophers/dp/1880656124
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 10:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:02 pm (UTC)"graffiti, tagging, and street art"
I don't much object to "funky youth capitalism"; you can apply the "it isn't really transgressive" argument to just about any cultural movement, but at a minimum kids trying to seem different or subversive can let something in the back door. Still, I find graffiti exhibitions odd given the general lack of graffiti (or stenciling, or subvertising, or even flyposting) on Paris streets (I've not seen an immense amount even in the banlieues, but maybe I've been in the wrong places). I'm not sure if that's just because it gets cleaned up quickly, or because it isn't being made in the first place.
"Thank Christ for the Muslims"
Well, yes. It's bizarre how the debate over banning the veil in France has happened almost exclusively in terms of religion/feminism/race. Hardly anybody is arguing that it's nice to have some variety on the streets, or that being able to choose what you wear is good on aesthetic as well as political grounds. My ideal world would include some kind of "nudists for the burqa" campaign, people claiming the right to walk the streets (un)dressed in whatever they damn well please.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:05 pm (UTC)If you haven't seen David LaChapelle's "RIZE," I highly recommend it.
Now that I live in Kreuzberg, I don't Krump anymore. I never thought I'd even see this stuff in Europe.
The plus side of living here is that even though in America I'm a foreigner, here I'm American to all the Germans, not a immigrant-wanna-be-American. No one questions my background after I tell them about the U.S., and in a way it's kind of sad that I've never felt more American than as a ex-patriot in Berlin.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:24 pm (UTC)On second thoughts, let's not. Christ for the Muslims might fly, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:31 pm (UTC)It would be sort of tragic if you left your country because you didn't love it any more, only to be identified with it everywhere you went.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:36 pm (UTC)You are correct in that I didn't actually realize the difference between these two spellings and always assumed 'expatriot' as standard.
tres pomo deshou?
Date: 2009-09-27 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:50 pm (UTC)Hope to run into you one day in Kreuzberg (literally one minute's walk from here)!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-27 11:56 pm (UTC)bye bye
Date: 2009-09-28 12:55 am (UTC)The fact that it took you 4 years (approx 1460 posts!) before you started to wear thin is no small feat. I've been thinking about this for a while and now that you have (re-?)gained some mainstream success and with the comment section getting vapid and slogany, I believe the timing is perfect.
After all, when life closes a tab - it opens a window.
Thanks a million!
- Raggi
Cobbler Nike
Date: 2009-09-28 01:09 am (UTC)Walt Disney: does his commercialism make him less of an artist?—who are Walt’s peers? I bring this up because Disney is sort of like a McDonalds of culture too: teams of people producing spectacles that dazzle many consumers by co-opting the somewhat original (think: Pinocchio) and pre-digesting the fairly complex (think: chicken McNuggets).
Take for example, the graffiti artist Blu (et. al.) getting the pro treatment with Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing” video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uad17d5hR5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYtk1Z0UUuE
Both are interesting “street art” imo, even though not “subversive” (maybe like Banksy is supposed to be). But was there ever a time when culture was authentic? When (art) work was authentic? Was work really all that great before the division of labor? The craft found in street markets may be just as much a pain to produce as some factory produced ware. Again, what I perceive, in this post and some others, is Romanticism and a call for a return to a golden era that was never that golden. But maybe I’m wrong, and this is about the future… and also the beauty that can be found today.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-28 01:55 am (UTC)but, 4, yes– let's get back to the purely visual. awhile back i had the same feelings about the monoculture uniforms... so i filled a duffel bag full of most of the gun-metal blues and black standards from my wardrobe, for experimental giveaway in senegal... : )
most of all a thanks: with curious friends here on the old continent, sending them to your blog can be quite a delightful way to broach the topic, rather than listening to my own highly subjective trans-dimensional explaining endeavors... (been thinking about shifting to story form...)... anyway, thanks!
so when are you going to come chill with americans in quasi-chinatown or fashionista dakar? or at least to the senegambian imbiss across the canal from your place?
oyasumi ~
nathan fuhr
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-28 03:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-28 03:21 am (UTC)I didn't mean to sound like a bitch, it's just that when someone writes about cultural variety like it is indiscriminately great, it beduffles me: not all inmigrant cultures are automatically better than ours just because we are bored and need variety. I for one am always uncomfortable around arab women covered from head to toe in dark fabric when it's 40º out in the sun in august.
Re: Cobbler Nike
Date: 2009-09-28 03:32 am (UTC)Yes, there was a time when culture was "authentic." But it was literally thousands of years ago, when we were more in tune with who we are as a species; before the advent of priest-craft and any industrialization. As of today, we are a complete lost people, we have no idea who we are and our gaian, feminine connection to the earth and its (lunar) cycles has been long severed.
Haven't you noticed? It's becoming more painfully apparent by the season, it seems...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-28 04:10 am (UTC)Re: Cobbler Nike
Date: 2009-09-28 04:42 am (UTC)The “Culture Industry” is basically a collision between Nietzsche’s “Herd” and Marx’s “Ideology”—I think the herd is smarter than many do, and that Ideology is as much a Social formation as it is a result of Economic infrastructure. I’d like to say I admire Andy Goldsworthy more than Walt Disney… but in some ways Walt upstages Andy (But then again… Yellowstone over Disneyland, right?) Ditto with anti-techno anarchy (Zerzan) vs. participatory economics (Albert)—I don’t see a clean resolution to conflicting idea-clusters, each of which may have its meritorious aspects. For me, it’s not the simple choice of veering left or right—but of thinking through endless contingent, local conflicts and compromises.
And no matter how authentic we may once have been, I think life has always been a tough slog in many respects! There was no garden of Eden… we’ve always been “fallen,” or rather, have wings with no ground (there never was a ground). Just look at wild animals: survival can be tough!—Keep on flappin’