Scalar Gallery Layout
For this digital platform Scalar, I have included different pages that show the flow of information and design from Rei Kawakubo in Japan, to Paris, France and her success and tribulations there, then how those ideologies and design practices go back to Japan to end up with the Lolita fashion scene. This way I can show the connections of cultural capitalism in play throughout this cultural exchange. I will be analyzing the photos in categories that will include visuals, aesthetics, emotion, grotesque/abject, Japaneseness/Western-ness, linguistics, scene and Characters/objects[1]. These categories will come and go in importance depending on the subject the gallery is concerning. At the top of this page, you will see a flow chart visualizing how the various media I chose connect with each other via tags and categories that are on the media files and pages themselves. My gallery of media will flow in the direction of how the process of cultural exchange and cultural capitalism expresses itself and changes. However, if one wants to find relationships between images that I have not laid out through the pages, one is able to through this Scalar flow chart.
The media analysis gallery starts on the next page "Rei Kawakubo and the Abject: Revolutionizing Fashion in Paris." On this page, there are three 'rooms' you can enter. The way I have set the gallery for the purpose of my Independent study, you should start with the page "Comme des Garcons 1980's," then go to "Comme des Garcons 1990's," then "Magazine 6, Advertisements and Architecture." This first set of gallery rooms set up the ideologies, practices and originality of Comme des Garcons. After this section, please move on to the gallery page, "Lolita Fashion Subcultural Scene." This set of 'rooms' display the shift from Rei Kawakubo's ideologies and practices, to fashion cultures of lolita and kawaii in Japan that take parts of, and embellish upon these ideologies and practices. These pages start with "Street Fashion and Kawaii Culture from Japanese Fashion Magazines," then goes to "Designer Character Brand Revolution," then lastly, "Gothic Lolita Bible." If you follow the path through you will get clear idea of the flow of cultural capitalism, changing of gender norms, and shifts in material expression during this time period, between the west, namely France, and Japan through fashion. To go to the next page of any section, there is a button on the bottom of every page that will lead you to the next. The other option is to go to the table of contents in the top left of the screen and click on the desired page.
Definitions and Terms to be familiar with:
Abject: “When an artist sells his art like a business.” The abjection of the self is the experience the self has when realizing that all its objects are based on the voids and spaces that lay the foundations of the internalized social order that created the subject[2] [3].
Designer Character Brands: This is a label given to a group of brands in Japan that contributed to the rise of Japanese fashion and what lead Tokyo to be considered one of the world’s fashion capitals.
Gothic Lolita: A large sub-category of Lolita, it is defined by specific brands and creators in KERA’s Gothic Lolita Bible. This style tends to have more gothic and Visual-kei influences.
Grotesque: Anything that disrupts the norm. An exaggeration, a disharmony. A world where symmetry and proportions of nature are no longer valid.
Jouissance: The moment before absolute pleasure turns into pain. In western society, women can access this much more easily because of the way they can perform their gender and furthermore perform with their concept of the other.
Japonisme: Japonisme is a French term that refers to the popularity, influence and appropriation of Japanese art and design among a number of western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of Japan in 1858.
Kawaii: Japanese word for cute. Carrying a connotation with innocence, shyness, smallness, lovability, pitiable. A Japanese aesthetic that emerged in the 1970’s Japan.
Lolita: Loli or Lolita referred to a style of dress that ideologically refers back to Rococo era Aristocracy in France and Victorian England. Lolita fashion uses female passivity and hyper-femininity to subvert dominant fashion ideologies. Ideologies also based on Shojo manga’s representations of women.
Ma: The zen koan of a time in-between, an opening, a space in-between.
Mu: The zen koan of emptiness, negation, nothingness.
Orientalism: Defined my Edward Said as the way the west objectifies and views the east. That the “orient” has specific values and aesthetics that makes the east primitive.
Scene: Defined by Bill Osgerby as a post-modern subculture. A scene is created when the values of the group are attached to material expression, music genres and temporal differences, in addition to aspects of subcultural ideologies.
Subculture: A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, political, and sexual matters.
Wabi Sabi: A buddhist concept, where wabi denotes decay and transience, and sabi denotes poverty and simplicity.
Zen Koan: Is a story or dialogue to test the mind and focus on questions of great doubt, like "what am I," or "what is this."
[2] Carlon Robbins, “‘The Abjection of Self,’ Julia Kristeva,” accessed November 8, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/15334922/_The_Abjection_of_Self_Julia_Kristeva.
[3] Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.