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My friend Joe recently shared some photographs with me, one of them was this photo of Steve Albini. He told me when he took this photo he was fixated by Albini’s rapturous stare. Here he is 26, fronting Rapeman in London on tour with Sonic Youth in 1988. The band was around from ’87 to ’89 and drew its name from the members’ collective mind-warping reflections on a Japanese comic of the same title. They would become characters themselves. Rapeman had an acutely abrasive and true metallic sound from a Travis Bean aluminum guitar coupled with a peculiar clairvoyant reductionism in the lyrics. After a moment with the intense glare, my eyes shifted downward. Albini’s denim is revealing. With the anti-quantity of negative space, the origins of these apparent threads presented a bit of a mystery. Is the denim falling apart or is on its way to being completed ? Are they being exhibitionist or in the throes of a suppression whereby the fabric itself attempts the void ? This denim isn’t fraying, it’s an ongoing confrontation of being completed, conformed to a modern, standardized form- a form obsessed with measurement(s). Perhaps this ‘fray’ left and was seen again on Martin Margiela’s Spring/Summer 2008 catwalk. Albini likely never gave a second thought about the jeans, and likely saw them as dispos-able. The jeans register as nothing rather than something, yet at the same time, they’re analogous to Rapeman’s sonics and lyrics, or composite. ___ Here they are held up by the horizontal guitar strap which also acts as a belt: A fusion of the guitar and the jeans which reminds that the demeanor and intensity of the music were more perpendicular than parallel. ; Could the same be said for a [potential] mass reproduction of them based on a tailored cut of these? ___ In a video my friend showed me, Patti Smith apparently cried [http://vimeo.com/51908409] when she saw herself, her own look, on Ann Demeulemeester’s catwalk. Later Patti becomes Ann’s friend and maybe more poignantly— her customer. In the end buying back her own look. The jeans are an event, a supernova in slow motion. an eventual coming and people were drawn to them whether they saw them at a show put on by Rapeman or Margiela. VG
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 MMMSS08. photo source: http://auctions.yahoo.co.jp
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My friend Joe recently shared some photographs with me, one of them was this photo of Steve Albini. He told me when he took this photo he was fixated by Albini’s rapturous stare. Here he is 26, fronting Rapeman in London on tour with Sonic Youth in 1988. The band was around from ’87 to ’89 and drew its name from the members’ collective mind-warping reflections on a Japanese comic of the same title. They would become characters themselves. Rapeman had an acutely abrasive and true metallic sound from a Travis Bean aluminum guitar coupled with a peculiar clairvoyant reductionism in the lyrics. Aside from the intense glare, my eyes shifted downward. Albini’s denim is revealing. With the anti-quantity of negative space, the origins of these apparent threads presented a bit of a mystery. Is the denim in a fray or is on its way to being completed? Are they being exhibitionist or in the throes of a suppression whereby the fabric itself attempts the void? This denim isn’t fraying, it’s an ongoing confrontation of being completed, conformed to a modern, standardized form- a form obsessed with measurement(s). Perhaps this ‘fray’ left and was seen again on Martin Margiela’s Spring/Summer 2008 catwalk. |
READER, 多孔空間1988, 2008, Ann Demeulemeester, aura, denim, F for Fake, holey, Martin Margiela, Patti Smith, punk, Steve Albini, The Void, VGNovember 29, 2012
