Photo by Alabi Isama
This is The Praxis Circus.
I am writing this from my hotel room in Calabar, thinking a lot about responsibility and how it seems that the world is moving too fast for it to be used as a guiding light for our actions. These days, responsibility is something that others make you take after you get caught messing up somehow. It doesn’t seem to operate as a condition that needs to be fulfilled before one embarks on something -
Can I take responsibility for this if it goes well; can I take responsibility for this if it fails; do I want to be responsible?
The responsibility question seems increasingly subsumed by more pressing concerns of money, happiness, fame and impulse; all motives way more suited to this postmodern Baudrillardian simulacrum we have constructed for ourselves in which everything is relative, subjective and in constant flux.
I think it is an important one to consider for artists and designers of all stripes, as we are some of (if not THE main) producers of supernormal stimuli and are also the custodians of awe in this age.
This is not some path to be trod with feelings of superiority and elitism, but one that should be approached daily with humility and caution. We are scouts and explorers charting uncharted terrain. We struggle to make sense of the things that we encounter and hope we survive long enough to bring it back to everybody else.
It is our job to upgrade the collective intelligence of our societies; our tools are vast and they are powerful. We misuse them to our detriment.
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Being concerned with how one dresses has constantly had to labor under the labels of frivolity and luxury in the West. Something that only women, the rich, the young and the unserious concerned themselves with. Serious people that did serious things (read: people that were concerned with traditionally masculine activities) were not concerned with how they dressed beyond certain practical necessities (see the double standard applied to the Obamas or the articles like this one all over business publications analysing the choices of people like Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs regarding their choice of a singular outfit. But clothing has a much more fundamental cultural role in our societies that are fundamentally to how we operate. This role has allowed clothing to be used as a mode of expression and resistance for subaltern communities. Whether it is aiding in the expression of identity of African Americans, the Suffragettes or making a statement with a superhero movie, clothing and how we dress has power, not only in communicating our status and identity to others, but also allowing us to define these aspects for ourselves.
The fashion industry routinely appropriates these modes of dress and seeks to amplify and exploit the cultural signals we receive from our clothing, and this is where I feel fashion and clothing designers have a responsibility to the average customer. The acceleration of trend cycles and the commoditisation of design in this field is not only bad for the planet, it is also distorting our ability to use clothing as a cultural signal - whether that is “Africans” trying to build coherent and lasting identities outside of the established institutionalised forms of creative expression, counter-cultural movements looking for a visceral means of expression or amplifying ones sense of self through the use of clothing not subject to shallow trends.
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Finally working on my podcast and one of the things I knew I needed to have in it was music. Bandcamp is where I tend to buy a lot of my music these days and while writing this newsletter I was listening to this episode of the Bandcamp Weekly. It is so good. Click that link and let it be the background for the rest of your day.
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The comic book, graphic novel and book writer Alan Moore calls himself a magician and views all his writing work as magic. This is a clip from a longer documentary where he defines magic as ‘the science and art of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness”. It is a good watch and the usefulness (and reality) of the ideas relayed are not in any way dependent on your own belief in magic, the supernatural or whether or not Alan Moore himself is sane or not. We can see the effects of the tools of creativity harnessed to the pursuit of money and the extraction of value on our societies and selves.
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Something else in this vein that I recommend watching is Jodorowsky’s Dune, an amazing documentary chronicling the failed attempt by the filmmaker and artist Alejandro Jodorowsky to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel into a film in the seventies. It is so inspiring and breathtaking and I highly recommend it to anybody involved in a creative endeavor.
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Nicholas Winding Refn is working on a series for Amazon!
Assassins, tarot cards, samurai, what’s there not to love honestly? I really hope it’s good. I have been looking for something like this ever since I immersed myself in the world of Killer 7 more than a decade ago.
I don’t know what it is about fusing killers with abstract symbolism, cool music, neon-lot, noir soaked environments and explorations of meaning and honor that appeals to me, but damn if it isn’t one of my favorite ultra-specific genres.
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Reading List
The writings and ideas of Marshall McLuhan continue to blow my mind and I recommend that anybody involved in arts, design, film, writing, cultural production etc. should give him a read. There is a great interview with him from the March 1969 issue of Playboy magazine that is a wonderful primer for his ideas and how prescient they were about our society today.
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I think I was able to keep this issue about art and fashion and design…sort of. 😬😬😬
Have a great week ahead and remember to breathe.