Cause Me Pain Hedi Slimane

I have a tee shirt from House of Holland's designer line that reads, or rather shouts in big red block letters, "CAUSE ME PAIN HEDI SLIMANE." Usually when I wear it out I get a few confused and unfamiliar glances. Hedi Slimane is one of the people whose name remains unknown by many (outside the fashion world) but whose designs and general aesthetic reverberate out into increasing spheres of influence.

As the designer for Dior Homme from 200-2007, his slimmed down suiting and louche musician sensibility made him an instant icon. Although he has retired from design he still communicates his point of view through his prolific blog/photo diary hedislimane.com, as well appearing behind the camera for magazine photo spreads.

Slimane's photos are stark and modern but never empty or unimportant. Unkempt yet refined. Harsh yet glamorous. Largely black and white, his portraits are honest and confrontational. They highlight style and uniqueness without seeming posed or self congratulatory. They are the documentation of people and moments who are allowed to exist naturally and then to evolve. You get the sense that these are moments like beats, moving to the next and the next on and on in a rhythmic series but remaining beautiful and necessary in their brief time to continue and define their place in the song.

The reason why I respect Hedi Slimane, besides an instant indefinable aesthetic connection, is that he always seems to be moving forward. He is literally and figuratively capturing the world in motion. There is no clinging to an idea of a romanticized past. No re-creation, no sense of the desperation trap fashion can easily excite themselves into. Just now and beyond. He delves into the moment, uses and defines it to the highest degree of design and experience, and then moves seamlessly into the next now. The thread of constant evolution.

I still get strange looks when I wear my shirt, but I don't mind. It is only a moment.

All images from www.hedislimane.com

Documentation

In a 2009 interview film maker Werner Herzog made the following statement-

"You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise. Because I stylize, I invent, there’s a lot of fantasy in it—not for creating a fraud, but exactly the contrary, to create a deeper form of truth, which is not fact-related. Facts hardly ever give you any truth, and that’s a mistake of cinéma vérité, because they always postulate it as if facts would constitute truth. In that case, my answer is that the phone directory of Manhattan is a book of books. Because it has 4 million entries, and they are all factually correct, but it doesn’t illuminate us. You see, I do things for creating moments that illuminate you as an audience, and the same thing happens with feature films as well."

Is the role of the documentarian to simply organize facts and present the most clear picture of reality? Or is it, as Herzog suggests, to go beyond black and white facts and restructure to illuminate a deeper form of truth. Which school of thought gives a sense of gravity to the sense of truth in question… is it a case of fact vs. truth, or more complexly, true vs. truth? (Obviously this all takes for granted that the documentarian is a fair source of information.) What information proves to elevate reality from true to revelatory?

I am reading Haruki Murakami's book Underground, a collection of accounts based on the 1995 Tokyo gas attacks. I truly discovered it by chance, and for some reason a book with varied points of view of a horrific incident compiled by a modern surrealist-esque writer of fiction appealed to me. In the preface of Underground Murakami notes that he spent a large part of his interviews with the victims establishing the lives and personalities of the people themselves, who they were before they became statistics and news fodder. While the details of this effort (by t he admission of the author) only appeared in small ratio to the stories of that day, the information wove the stories together in an almost unconscious balance of the "irreducible humanity" Murakami, as a novelist, embraced. It was a conscious effort by the author to offset media reports dealing with facts and pure information that nonetheless devolved into an "us vs them" portrayal of faceless citizens and cruel perpetrators. The book, is structured quite masterfully, with factual information about each car that was hit, followed by the individual accounts based on interviews Murakami conducted with the willing participants. The interviews are all mainly the words of the subject, guided by Murakami's questions, but they are prefaced with brief, almost staccato introductions ("He speaks quickly, and never mulls over his words…He plays guitar…He always carries two lucky charms his wife gave him.") Descriptions, short and jagged like a jotted note or overheard party banter provide tiny glimpses into the victims and always lead to the final words of the intros which violently interrupt the pleasant trivialities with a sentence such as " Mr. Arima had the bad luck to catch the Marunouchi Line-which he doesn't usually take-and get gassed." The effect is jarring and elucidative. It is not so much the emotional effect of envisioning real people in difficult situations as it is contextualizing an event. Adding a sense of reality to what a news report or list of facts would seem to establish as "real."

Without such context we remain trapped in a constant good and evil battle of the unaware, condemned by dry figures with their lack of depth of reality into the tired cliché of "bad things happen to good people." Shrug and sigh. A true documentarian shouldn't let us get off so easy.

Through what filter do we document our own lives, and what do we believe because of it?

Style File-Celine

Celine. Fall 2010 RTW.

Phoebe Philo's second outing at Celine made huge fashion waves in Paris this season with her swoon worthy Fall collection. This is not fantasy or fetish fashion, it is something more rare. Real life high style. Clothing as the expression of a modern woman, powerful and dynamic. I could describe the collection in more detail, but I think the images speak for themselves.

Sober, refined, modern.


Fantastic lines. With pockets. I love pockets.

Who do I need to see to get this coat immediately?

More interesting lines, modern proportions, spot on fit and a hint of shimmer.

It is a phenomenal collections, maybe the best of the season. Architectural cuts, stark colors, all sleek style and powerful modern sophistication. Urbane class and a most promising nod to the present and future from Philo's reign at Celine.

Deep Into the Void

This is a clip from a program on the BBC that was filmed in 1997 called, from the best I can gather, Modern Minimalists. In it, Bjork, who hosts the show, talks with Estonian composer Arvo Part about his music and the idea of silence as the tool of the creator.

Now, I'm not saying I do not respond to a sensory overload approach to art; any kind of orgiastic fury of sound, movement, color, sparkle, light, and anything else dazzling, dizzying, or otherwise mind bending and I'm likely won't be complaining. In fact, I'm quite happy having my senses overloaded from time to time. What I do believe, however, is that we live in a time of total sensory overindulgence and the only way to any kind of new idea or progress in a post modern age is to refine, pull back and rely on a new appreciation of silence and restraint. When we have said everything there is to say and still not arrived at a point of awareness the only logical reaction is to stop and synthesize.

Thus is the power of minimalism. It is both a process of creation and synthesis.

A minimalistic approach inherently works in the symbiotic dichotomy and creative powerhouse of the positive/negative relationship. Creating in the negative, the dark empty space of minimalism has an illuminative effect of the positive. An entity hanging in a the harsh background of negative space highlights the gravity of the positive unit. In the interview Part says, "You can kill people with sound, and if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is the opposite of killing." Delving into the silence amplifies the carefully orchestrated and incredibly powerful effect of sound.

Minimalism also grants a greater power to the creator, whose work, balancing on less, therefore must be more clean and pure. Each note (using the example of music, but I think the idea will stand across mediums) stands in greater distance from its companions. It must be stronger and bolder than a note that is lost in a chorus of its symphonic brethren. A masterful artist is able to do more with less while creating a strong statement. This is why minimalism allows the opportunity for the creation of great art, but the reason it is uniquely suited to be a force of new enlightenment and opportunity in the present falls to the viewer. It is an art respectful of the mind taking it in. With less to apprehend, the mind of the listener/viewer/participant becomes more active, filling in the spaces. Instead of a sensory overload, where the information is shoved towards you and almost distracts you into acceptance, minimalism posits and allows for reflection. The artist/viewer dynamic becomes real and alive.
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Perhaps we will be able to approach the world with a better eye for the ebb and flow of sound and silence, space and weight, feeling and reason, tiny illuminated notes in a sea of inky depth. When I approach a crowded world I always return to the best piece of advice I have received, artistic or otherwise-

"Sometimes you have to contemplate the spaces between the words."*

*Thanks Dad!