Browsing by Author "Lee, Yeseung"
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Item Embargo The ambiguity of seamlessness: The skin ego and the materiality of fashion(Intellect, 2015-06-01) Lee, YeseungThis article examines the materiality of fashion and the role it plays in the continuous making of personal and social subjectivities, through the author’s own experience of making seamless woven garments. Psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu’s influential notion of ‘the Skin Ego’ theorizes the initial formation of human subjectivity based on the tactile interaction between the mothering environment and the baby. As a garment maker, the author analyses the woven surface or garment as the extension of the Skin Ego, and inquires into the ways that the ‘separation’ from the earliest relationship and the unending attempt to repair this ‘cut’, might become figured in the ambiguity that is found in the seams and edges of garments. Integrating refer- ences from the fields of psychoanalysis, anthropology and cultural studies, this article suggests that the proc- ess of making and using garments – regarded as the interaction between human and material, as well as interpersonal, interaction – successfully reveals the ambiguities inherent in modern subjectivity.Item Metadata only Apparition: the (im)materiality of Modern Surface(De Montfort University, 2018-03-09) Lee, Yeseung; Sampson, E.This one-day symposium examines the contemporary fascination with the surfaces, surveying the (im)material surface qualities of our everyday environment. It brings together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines—creative arts and design, architecture, performance, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, history, literary studies and social studies of science and technology—to discuss the construction, dissolution and deconstruction of the surface. Siegfried Kracauer wrote, in the 1920s when the Western world was captivated by technology and mechanised production, that urban mass culture was defined by surface affects and described the experience of modernity as being that of a surface condition.1 Modernity’s obsession with the surface was revealed most clearly in built, designed and manufactured everyday things. The ‘surface splendour’ filled picture palaces2; glass architecture alluded to utopian milieu that breeds revolutionary subjectivity3; Josephine Baker wore her naked skin like a shimmering sheath4; factory spaces full of gleaming machinery were worshipped like a temple; the sleek surface of Bakelite signalled a new era of consumer goods. Today, almost 100 years on, in the midst of another technological revolution, the creative industries are again preoccupied with the surface and its dissolution, disintegration or efflorescence, accentuating the surface’s function of mediation or passage, rather than that of separation or boundary. The surface evaporates, percolates, become blurred or spectral in Diller and Scofidio’s Cloud Machine; Bill Morrison’s Decasia; Bart Hess’s Digital Artefact; Sruli Recht’s translucent leather collection Apparition. James Turrell’s light architecture is simultaneously material and immaterial, and the surface seems to disappear altogether with Surrey Nanosystems’ Vantablack. If the everyday surface can be regarded as a site for the projection and display of psychical, cultural, social, and political values, what is the implication of the dissolving surface? How does the (im)materiality of surface affect our experience of the body, self and society today? What is our attitude towards these surface qualities? In what forms does surface materiality exist in the virtual age? What kind of moral, functional, aesthetic values does the surface conceal or reveal? We welcome papers for 20-minute presentations on themes including but not limited to: • Material, processual, affective and symbolic aspects of the surface; • The conflation of diverse surfaces: the surface of the body, garment, product, furniture, interior wall, digital screen, painting, architectural façade; • Immaterialisation, fragmentation, corrosion, decomposition, disintegration of surface; • How contemporary art and design express the disruptive potential of surface; • The ways in which surface conditions can influence surrounding space, going beyond physical structure; • the (im)materiality of an artistic/technological medium and its potential to create a transgressive surface quality or atmosphere.Item Metadata only ‘The Authentic Surface: Making Garments, Selves, and Others’(University of Hertfordshire, Brooklyn College of the CUNY, LIM College, New York, 2016-05-06) Lee, YeseungAt the very core of fashion, as a system based on the dialectic relationship between the high-end consumer and the mass market, is the notion of the ‘authentic’ as the marker of distinction, the desire for which continuously generates change. Authenticity is a notion inseparable from luxury in fashion. But today it is often associated with an abstract commercial value fabricated by designer idolatry and media-driven marketing using the ‘glamour’ of celebrity culture. As contemporary consumers increasingly inquire into the provenance of their luxury purchases, luxury companies place ever greater emphasis on the craftsmanship and heritage, while often sourcing labour in lower income countries. Moreover, the frequent association between ‘hands’ and authenticity is often exploited by both ends of the industry, and therefore the handmade becomes a complex issue in contemporary western fashion. Authenticity and luxury, however, need to be recognized in the mode of production, which subsequently inspires the mode of consumption. The appreciation of the way things are made affects the way things are used, linking the maker and user through the product. This link renders the product an object for keeping, rather than throwing away or replacing, so that the traces of use can be continuously added to the traces of making. Writing in the 1930s, in ‘the age of mechanical reproduction’, Walter Benjamin suggested that the unique value of the ‘authentic’ work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. With ever-improving methods and speed of making copies today, the notion of authenticity and ‘original use value’ continue to be compelling issues. Denis Hollier suggests that Benjamin’s use value appertains to that which resists displacement and reproduction, and depends on particular, ‘jealous’, irreplaceable objects. In this paper, I reflect on how a garment maker, by way of putting together garments by hand, might contribute to this peculiar use value. With reference to my own experience of making, I inquire into the ritual aspects of making and using in contemporary fashion. What are the conditions of ‘ritual making’ that generate usefulness beyond utilitarian function? Rather than mythologizing the handmade – as is often the case in luxury marketing campaigns – this paper explores the process of making by hand for the sake of the experience (Erfahrung, Benjamin), against the backdrop of contemporary fashion. The process leads me, in re-thinking the notion of luxury, to focus on the individual mode of perception in making and using, foregoing the preciousness of material, or measurable time or labour invested in the product. Incorporating Benjamin’s notion of aura and mimesis, and Viktor Shklovsky’s notion of estrangement (ostranenie), the handmade is here suggested as a ‘poetic device’ that triggers the ‘overlapping edges’ between maker and user, that is, potential social links generated through the product.Item Embargo Eyes in the Skin I Live In: The Incorporation of Surveillance in Mediatized Culture(Taylor and Francis, 2019-12-05) Lee, YeseungIncreasing biotechnological interventions to the human body challenge long- established Western binaries, opening up a political struggle over the boundaries they cut through. While this incorporated technology enhances and extends human lives, it can also facilitate (self-)surveillance, especially when it involves information technology capable of generating, analyzing and sharing data. At this confluence of human and nonhuman, the article explores the polysemy of technologized skin through Pedro Almodóvar's film The Skin I Live In (2011) and Michel Foucault's notion of "technologies" by which humans are made subjects. The complex system of power in this film is compellingly figured in the protagonist Vera's transgenic skin, leading us to regard the skin itself as "eyes", that is, a (self-)surveillance so pervasive that it disappears from our conscious register. The contrast between Vera's flawless transgenic skin and the apotropaic "worn" skin-space she creates—the conspicuous patchwork seams and shadowy wall markings—highlights the incorporated surveillance in de-corporalized society, while at the same time suggesting potential strategies to live through today's complex system of existence.Item Open Access The poetics of self-fashioning: between nonsense and meaning'(City University of Hong Kong, 2014-06-12) Lee, YeseungThis paper reflects on the role of garments in the changing sense of self through the literary notions of “estrangement/ defamiliarisation” (Shklovsky) and “poetic function” (Jakobson). What are the poetic or prosaic qualities of artefacts: what is it that renders some garments mundane and others captivating, auratic, and ‘disruptive’? How and why certain clothes tell us much more about human’s need of protection or decency? I suggest that it is contingent on the relationship between self and other articulated through the notion of defamiliarisation. Shklovsky suggests that poetic language is structured, impeded, distorted speech, as opposed to economical and correct prose, that it removes the perceiver from the domain of automatic, or conventional, perception, making them pause and dwell on what is being perceived. Applying this to other domains of art, Shklovsky proposes that artistic practice aims to make objects foreign and unfamiliar, to increase the difficulty of perception, because the process of perception itself is the main purpose. (Shklovsky 1991, 12-3) The physical proximity and ubiquity often render cloth and clothing invisible, ‘nonsensical’ material. Yet precisely because of this proximity, once estranged, garments can be effective means of self-objectification. With the material qualities showing ourselves to us and touching us, garments are powerful metaphorical as well as mimetic representation of the self, at once the trace and symbol the self. Depending on our perceptiveness as a wearer, the materiality of garment can trigger a “disruption of rhythm” (ibid., 14), or defamiliarisation, allowing us a ‘poetic experience’, as Shklovsky would put it. The ambiguity, or the disrupted meanings, brought on by the estrangement however, is quickly settled into a new meaning: our need for the immutable reality, the unique unchanging self, inevitably draws a new distinct boundary. This sequential steps—the garment as a poetic device, estrangement, ambiguity, the generation of new meaning and self—is potentially unending, as the authentic unchanging self, lying in a never-attainable beyond, is faithfully pursued, but also constantly doubted and subverted. This understanding of garment as a poetic device unsettles the deep-seated surface/depth dichotomy: the self is not anything ‘hidden,’ ‘underneath’ or ‘behind’ to uncover, but transient, multiple, and constantly self-generating. Dressing practice as self-making is thus an iterative, poetic process, the constant oscillation between self and other, between nonsense and renewed meaning. This permanent passage is conducted through bodily engagement, the visceral and emotional process of interacting with the material other. The multiple realities experienced in this passage is materialized in our dressed selves, the constantly self-fashioning bodies.Item Metadata only Rethinking luxury through the handmade(2017-10-13) Lee, YeseungAt the very core of fashion, as a system based on the dialectic relationship between the high-end consumer and the mass market, is the notion of the ‘authentic’ as the marker of distinction, the desire for which continuously generates change. Today, however, the authentic is often associated with an abstract commercial value fabricated by designer idolatry and media-driven marketing using the ‘glamour’ of celebrity culture. As contemporary consumers increasingly inquire into the provenance of their purchases, luxury companies place ever greater emphasis on the craftsmanship and heritage, while often sourcing labour in lower income countries. Moreover, the frequent association between ‘hands’ and authenticity is often exploited by both ends of the industry, placing the handmade at the centre of ethical issues in contemporary fashion. In this presentation, I examine the notion of luxury and the handmade less via the finished product, but rather via the experience of production, which subsequently inspires the experience of consumption. With reference to my own experience of making, I reflect on how a garment maker, by way of putting together garments entirely by hand, might create a peculiar and unique value. What are the conditions of making that generate usefulness beyond utilitarian function? Rather than mythologising the handmade – as is often the case in luxury marketing campaigns – this paper focuses on the individual mode of perception in making and using, and potential social links generated through the product. Forgoing the preciousness of material or measurable time invested in the product, this presentation suggests an alternative notion of luxury, one which reflects the authenticity arising from attentive modes of interaction with material objects.Item Embargo Seaming Hands: The Meaning and Value of the Handmade in Contemporary Fashion(Bloomsbury, 2015-05-07) Lee, YeseungThe perpetual crisis of subjectivity experienced today means that the modern self is always partial and relative to what is “other.” This corresponds to the more individualized and coded values relevant to what is currently regarded as “original” or “authentic,” notions that are inseparable from luxury in fashion. This article analyzes the handmade in contemporary fashion as the product of liminality and our reflexive response to it – a necessary process in the renewal of existing values. This analysis derives from my experience of making a series of seamless woven garments, entirely by hand. The handcrafted elements and seamlessness of these garments, qualities traditionally associated with luxury production, are reappraised in this article, as the process which offers a luxury experience for the maker: the act of making becomes a method of displacement, creating a space for contemplation and self-reflection, which is then communicated to the users via the material trace left by the making hands. Certain modes of making and using material objects can thus be seen as our own “rites of passage,” which heighten the awareness of the link between self and other in contemporary society. This article therefore suggests an alternative notion of luxury, one which reflects the value arising from attentive modes of interaction with material objects and people, and the reflexivity this experience allows. This new luxury is thus a more graspable one, as it can be self-generated here and now.Item Open Access 'Seaming, Writing, and Making Strange: between material and text'(Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland, 2014-11-26) Lee, YeseungAlthough prevalent in the process of practice-led research for the arts, uncertainty and ambiguity seem to be most powerfully present in the transaction between material and textual elements. This article discusses the productive aspects of ambiguity emerging in the process of translating the experience of making into a communicable language, and how this productivity can be heighten by the materiality and corporeality involved. In the course of the physical and emotional process of making, an ‘empathetic’ relationship can develop between the maker-researcher and the ‘body of work’—the artefact-in-process, documented material, fragmentary texts being put together, etc.,— maximizing the ‘stranger effect.’ Through the author’s own experience of oscillating between making and reflecting, this article aims to demonstrate how the practice of practice-led research can complicate the arrival at certainty, or settled knowledge, enriching the outcome as a result.Item Open Access Seaming, Writing, and Making Strange: Between material and text.(Auckland University of Technology, 2016-05) Lee, YeseungAlthough prevalent in the process of artistic research, uncertainty and ambiguity seem to be most powerfully present in the transaction between material and textual elements. This article focuses on the productive aspects of ambiguity emerging in the process of translating the experience of making into a communicable language. The article derives from the author’s in-depth case study of her own practice: making seamless woven garments via peculiar hand-weaving methods. The materiality and corporeality involved in the process of research can prolong and heighten this ambiguity. In the course of the physical and emotional process of making with the hands and documenting the process, the author discovers an ‘empathetic’ relationship developing between the self and the ‘body of work’—the artefact-in-process, documented material, fragmentary texts being put together—maximizing the ‘stranger effect.’ This complicates the arrival at certainty, or settled knowledge, but is also recognized to enrich the outcome of the research. The article demonstrates the ways in which the author sought to retain, within the layout of the article and the text itself, this rich ambiguity arising between material and text.Item Metadata only Seamlessness: Making and (Un)Knowing in Fashion Practice(Intellect / University of Chicago Press, 2016) Lee, YeseungTaking the concept of “seamlessness” as her starting point, Yeseung Lee offers an innovative practice-based investigation into the meaning of the handmade in the age of technological revolution and globalized production and consumption. Combining firsthand experience of making seamless garments with references from psychoanalysis, anthropology, and cultural studies, Lee reveals the ways that a garment can reach to our deeply superficial sense of being, and how her seamless garments can represent the ambiguity of a modern subject in a perpetual process of becoming. Richly illustrated and firmly rooted in the actual work of creation, this daringly innovative book breaks new ground for fashion research.Item Open Access The skin, the garment surface, and the production of modern magic(Association of Art Historians, 2014-04-11) Lee, YeseungAs the membrane which serves as the interface between what is ‘inside’ and what is ‘outside’ the body, skin possesses a powerful symbolic function in generating metaphors for the boundaries between the self and others. This metaphorical function of skin is most powerfully present in our clothes, perhaps due to the material quality of cloth which is ‘empathetic’ with the skin. Our need to create and represent social membranes is reflected in the complex conventions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of bringing skin into contact with cultural surfaces such as clothing. This paper addresses the fluid and transformative meaning of garment surface, focusing on that of the handmade, a concept which dialectically evolved through the rise of mechanised industry. With the advancement of digital manufacturing now forecasting a “new industrial revolution,” what might be the consequent approaches to the skin, touch, and garment surface? I juxtapose my own experience of making garments via a hand-woven seaming method with the anthropological notion of magic, which also appeared alongside industrialisation. The significance of tactile engagement with material objects via their appropriation, personalisation, and reinterpretation is emphasised, and this is illustrated by the “contagion-like” transition of distinct boundaries in my hand-woven seams. The deeply reflective yet visceral quality of making and using process is highlighted to reveal that rationality and intuition can coexist, mutually generating empathetic social communication—“magical effect”—which imbues the artefact with an authentic value.Item Open Access Surface and Apparition: The Immateriality of Modern Surface(Bloomsbury, 2020-11-12) Lee, YeseungSurface is one of the most intensely debated topics in recent scholarship in arts, humanities and social sciences. This compelling transdisciplinary edited volume reveals the type of knowledge that can only be produced within interstices, in the most productive mingling between making and thinking from various disciplines. The book investigates material and immaterial surface qualities in everyday and artistic surroundings. As we increasingly experience the world as surfaces, the changing technologies that build, design or manufacture these surfaces, in turn, make us. In contrast to the responses to preceding industrial revolutions, contemporary concerns with surface seem preoccupied with its function of mediation or passage, rather than with that of separation or boundary. Interestingly this dissolution of surface often occurs in tandem with insistence on its materiality. In this volume, international scholars (UK, US and Canada) in the fields of anthropology, architecture, film, media, fine art, fashion, textile, silversmithing, woodworking, and archival practices account for how the material and the immaterial draw attention to each other in everyday and artistic practice. The surface functions in this book as a transdisciplinary method for attending to critical issues concerning human creative and technological endeavours. Written by a practitioner, or a scholar sensitive to current practice in their fields, each chapter addresses particular technologies (human body and sensory organs, manually operated tools or machines, industrial machines, digital devices, robots), materials (cloth, glass, wood, paper, resin, silver and other metallic substances, light, air or sound), and modes of attention, movement and engagement.Item Open Access The Textilesphere: The threshold of everyday contacts(Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2019-09-05) Lee, YeseungA sense of displacement pervades contemporary life, with the global crisis of forced migrations, increasingly modular and distributed families, and remote social interactions replacing familiar ways of being in a space with others. This sentiment, together with the widening application of highly advanced textiles in many areas of the built environment, calls for an appraisal of textiles in relation to notions of home and belonging. Drawing on a range of academic and practitioner literature, brought together under 'relational approaches', this essay puts forward the 'textile-sphere' as a new ontological category and a critical device for textiles thinking within this context of societal and technological changes. The textile-sphere is an affective spatiality generated by physical wear as indexical traces of everyday life, emphasizing sustained physical contact as an essential of home. It suggests a new way of thinking about textiles which transcends 2D–3D, human-nonhuman or material–immaterial dichotomies, focusing, instead, on the flexible relations between surfaces. The textile-sphere is a useful tool for exploring the complexity of the contemporary spatiality in relation to various physical and virtual surfaces, and the role textiles can play in interrogating this complexity, letting us contemplate what it means to be 'in touch', to be home.Item Open Access 'Textilesphere: To mark is to be marked'(Manchester Metropolitan University, 2018-04-12) Lee, YeseungThe link between textile and place explored in disciplines such as architecture, media, film studies, and visual art often focuses on haptic visuality and surface luminosity (Bruno 2014). This paper instead seeks to approach the link from the tactual and affective materiality of textile, emphasising the aspect of ‘lived’ environment as a matrix of indexical traces. The paper suggests ‘textile-sphere’ as a new category, encompassing all ‘lived’ surface in the everyday environment. As Peter Altenberg wrote in ‘In Munich’, the dwelling and the objects it contains are like the epidermis of the dweller, forming a collective organism. As the material closest to the body, textile is the paradigm of surfaces and places engendered through living as marking, Whilst textile is a receiving material that can be marked by staining, imprinting, and moulding, it is also an agential material that marks our bodies and psyches through its affective presence. The English word ‘mark’ shares the same origin with the word ‘margin,’ revealing its affinity with the notion of localisation and territorialisation. Marking and being marked, then, is the condition for existing through becoming, which might explain the human compulsion to mark the skin, cloth, walls, writing paper, and other everyday surfaces, building 'archi-textures' (Lefebvre). Through such an understanding, it is possible to conflate various everyday surfaces and spaces as ‘textilesphere’, a lived space with palimpsestic and mimetic quality like the Skin Ego (Anzieu). This idea will be explored drawing on examples of Paracinema (Walley) and Pedro Almodóvar’s film The Skin I Live In (2011) to draw attention to the presence or the absence of indexical traces in our everyday environment.