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the gallery, to the body and the street. This phenomena,
I feel, must be a result of the late 20th century, or dare
I say it, Postmodern, belief in the breakdown of artist
as unassailable god. Instead, the artist can be any man,
and as a result of the comments of Duchamp and the
whole Dada movement, art can be anything.
Also written into the unspoken creed of this grouping
is heart-felt belief that there is a direct correlation between
the increase in the isolation in our post-industrial
society and the desire for primitivism. It is almost as if
that as God was once usurped by science and money,
it too shall necessarily collapse, but his time under the
force of this new godless mass who have found belief
in some crypto-primitivism and a new hybrid culture.
As such fashion, in all its manifestations, is the tool
by which these new pioneers of culture seek to bind
themselves: through self-expression one finds those
who hold similar beliefs, those who have similar aims.
However, there is also an ideological factor to be
considered when we consider modes of dress or rituals
of display. It can clearly be seen that the members of
this ‘fashion’, or as Polhemus describes them, members
of a “style tribe”, are generally of an underclass which
BUY The Customized Body online from and
wishes to identify itself. If, then, the disenfranchised
and the disheartened give up on conventional codes or
symbols they are signalling to the dominant culture,
and to those who have not yet made that step to identify
themselves, that they are out there on the edge. And
more importantly, if they are not happy to be there, as
some surely are, they are issuing a rallying call to join
them, as there is surely safety in numbers.
The way the people who operate in this cultural
space are in actuality, however, very different from
the theory. The more you look at this phenomena
the more you realise that there is no one answer, but
instead we are able to perceive a set of answers that
make up a larger question. That question I believe, is
along the lines of this: we have a culture, one which
is straining at its edges. The more diverse the world
becomes, or we perceive it to become, the more it
pulls at its seams. The more we question it and pry
at its secrets the more the stitches loosen. What we
really want to know is, where do we go from here?
The answer I think is found in this new interest in
primitivism, and especially in the ways in which we
can combine it with ideas of the future. �
102
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