OUGD501 / Context Of Practice / The Contemporary.

The contemporary blur.

With the constant churning out of temporary ideals portrayed to the youth of today, how is any subculture able to stabilize and define itself?

‘local’ has diminished; communication has become globalized with the catalyst of the Internet. Documentation of the new is aiding in its destruction. Styles are no longer contained in a local area; photography on the Internet has destroyed all sense of community.

Fashion being used as a mode of expression has diminished;

Fashion has the intention of portraying a selection of personal attributes, but we have to question how can clothing be defined and categorized enough to be recognized to portray a specific ideology any longer. Expressions of interests, personalities and beliefs are decreasingly less communicated through ones attire, fashion has become less true in the sense that it has become a shallow, purely aesthetical declaration of, primarily, wealth. The concept of bearing logos and using the beliefs and ideologies of a brand could be interpreted as the signifier of the emptiness and the mindlessness of contemporary youth.

Social media can be seen as the platform that houses contemporary subcultures, if there are to be any. A transition from reality to a digital world is a dark thought. Secret groups dealing in vintage clothing; artifacts of past subcultures, can be seen as a metaphor for our contemporary blur, a merge of what once was, keeping and idolizing the aesthetic, yet loosing the original ideology; A subculture is, after all, more than fashion.

There are aesthetic reminiscent of subcultures but have we lost the way of the thinking that can create a movement. Looking beyond fashion and music, are there any reminiscent of the security, belonging and devotion that were once found in subculture; or have these desires become satisfied with soulless digital replacements.

It appears subcultures have become censored, stripped of the original conceptual approach that defines them and robbed of the aesthetic that was used to convey such ideas. This stolen aesthetic is diluted to fit into mainstream society, appropriated by mainstream fashion to please a flock of followers.

A contemporary interpretation of a subculture is the ‘Hipster’, a hollow description in which 90% of today’s youth can fit into. Anyone who shares a sense of creativeness, absurdity or re-appropriation can be assumed to be a hipster.

We don’t experience the clashing of subcultures, the glamourizing imagery of everyday people fighting for escapism on a beach. We glamourize temporaries for their aesthetic.

We are the blur, re-appropriating the past but moving too quickly to settle, we are in awe of past subcultures, placing them in a contemporary context, it is unconceivable to imagine similar today.