NEO ‘80s
Peter De Potter
Don’t believe the headlines in nowadays
glossy fashion magazines or the recent slogans from the record company’s
pr-machines: the eighties are NOT back and no, we will NOT be dragged ‘back to
eighties’. That decade is over, it all happened 20 odd years ago and we still
haven’t mastered the art of actually travelling back in time. Living in the
present time is, well, tough enough.
Yet
certain memories linger and some flashbacks won’t fade out. The eighties, the
real eighties, made for some groundbreaking changes, in fashion, music and
media – the eighties even altered the way we now perceive those three zones of
popular culture. Obviously there were fads and hypes and short-lived trends
back then as well, but in retrospect, the eighties still radiate an overall
suggestion of endless possibility and unlimited creativity. Nowadays, we look
back on the eighties as a decade of experiment, freedom, abandon, overload
even. And rightly so.
At
the end of the nineties, the then much-coveted minimalism and realism went into
overload too. Popular culture, in dire need of anything exciting or rebellious,
took its obsession with fame and down-beaten glamour to its logical end,
resulting in the blandness of logomania and the advent of cynical
reality-sitcoms. At the turn of the millennium, modern life was crammed with
insignificant starlets acting like plastic divas, house clubs turning into
consumerist supermarkets of sound and fashion houses playing it as safe as
possible. Too much, too little…too bad.
Little
wonder then some smart insiders tried to investigate where and when it all went
wrong. In dusting off their old notebooks, they rediscovered the true pioneers
of post-modern bravado and creative eclecticism: fashion stylists like Ray
Petri and Simon Foxton, style provocateurs like Leigh Bowery and Jean Paul
Goude, iconic image-makers like Bruce Weber and Derek Jarman, pop iconoclasts
like Morrissey and Boy George, wizards of pr�t-�-porter like Jean-Paul Gaultier
and Bodymap, graphic artists like Neville Brody and Peter Saville… all of them
got re-examined and re-appropriated by today’s cutting edge fashion magazines,
webzines and consultancy agencies. Young designers like Nicolas Ghesqui�re
(Balenciaga), Luella Bartley and Jeremy Scott decidedly reworked the kind of
geometrical shapes and sharp looks that defined (at least a part of) the
eighties aesthetics, while more introspective designers like Raf Simons,
Veronique Branquinho and Bernhard Willhelm reminisced about their teenage
memories from that decade.
Obviously
and inevitably, there has been a lot of pastiche and tongue-in-cheek
plagiarism, as witnessed in recent fashion stories or catwalk shows. Already,
we have seen one pair of ironic shoulder pads or funny legwarmers too many. But
those aside, it’s clear that the sudden reappraisal of the eighties was for the
most part heartfelt and necessary: anything, anything to rock the boat again
and raid against the tedious status-quo.
Those
cravings for upheaval and excitement have been particularly strong within the
music scene. To counter the facelessness of the current house/techno scene and
the overt materialism of today’s hip-hop crews, some (now influential) pop
artists have started to embrace the daring tactics of early eighties bands
again, harking back to their original electronic sounds and outlandish on-stage
antics. In true eighties mode, it hasn’t stopped at music: these new artists
and bands are fusing their radical electro tunes with fashion and performance,
creating a vivid, almost anarchic spectacle in the process. NYC’s
Fischerspooner for instance were spawned from the art scene and now perform
both in art galleries and at major festivals. While their music takes quite a
few pointers from the synthesizer bands from the early eighties, their
ambitious, almost phantasmagorical take on video art, costume design and
advertising reveals a very modern approach to their craft. Berlin’s Chicks On
Speed on the other hand prefer a more political stance, icing their electro
tunes with a fierce do-it-yourself attitude. Other acts like Peaches, Miss
Kitten, Ladytron or Vive La F�te, each in their own way, combine a genuine love
for proto-electro sounds with a wayward sense of glamour and sexuality. It’s
not only sequencers and beatboxes though: American guitar bands like Interpol,
The Rapture or The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are getting critical acclaim for their
reinvention of early eighties post-punk and funk.
This recent tidal wave of neo-80 visuals and sounds has been
tested, analyzed and criticized, but a part of today’s young generation never
saw this movement as some kind of media invention. On the contrary: young kids
all over the world took inspiration from the refreshed outlook on the original
eighties and got on the case themselves. Not blinded by nostalgia or irony, the
young crop has been creating their own little subculture again: impromptu,
underground neo-electro parties, extravagant make-up, do-it-yourself styling
with thrift shop clothes and homemade badges, radical haircuts…yes, everything
to generate the feeling of EXCESS. And a sense of humour, bearing in mind the
words of Adam Ant: ‘ridicule is nothing to be scared of’.
Pitti Imagine’s exhibition ‘EXCESS’
would not be complete without this current phenomenon of neo-80’s. A video
installation, commissioned especially for this exhibition, tackles this
movement in a surprisingly conceptual way. Instead of exhibiting the work of
the well-publicized movers and shakers, the video installation focuses on three
anonymous kids, each in their own attire and surroundings. Starting out as an
evocative documentary, the video quickly morphs into an action piece, in which
the three protagonists take control over their influences and transmit their
own reflection on the phenomenon of the neo-80’s. Working on many different levels,
the video installation prefers emotion over facts, and alertness over
nostalgia.
The
idea of the neo-80’s is also explored in the catalogue book that accompanies
the exhibition. A 32-page section gives an insight into the many different
aspects of the neo-80’s sentiments, showcasing fashion (specific collections by
Veronique Branquinho, Louis Vuitton by Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga by Nicolas
Ghesqui�re, John Galliano, Raf Simons among others), music (record cover
artwork or visuals of artists like Miss Kitten, Fischerspooner, Zoot Woman and
others), fashion stories, magazine design, photography and film. None of the
names included in the catalogue are meant to be pigeonholed as ‘typical
neo-80’s’…instead, the ensemble of the selected images and words conjure up an
atmosphere, where light-heartedness, yes, excessiveness meets a sincere
yearning for less complicated times.
Info
about the exhibition:
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>a Fondazione Pitti Immagine
Discovery project
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>for the 50th anniversary of the
Centro di Firenze per la Moda Italiana
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>in collaboration with Pitti
Immagine
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>organized by Maria Luisa Frisa and
Stefano Tonchi
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>Florence, Stazione Leopolda
8
January – 8 February 2004
