Apparition: the (im)materiality of Modern Surface

Lee, Yeseung 2018. Apparition: the (im)materiality of Modern Surface. Apparition: the (im)materiality of Modern Surface. De Montfort University, Leicester 09 Mar 2018

TitleApparition: the (im)materiality of Modern Surface
AuthorsLee, Yeseung
TypeConference paper
Abstract

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.

Year2018
ConferenceApparition: the (im)materiality of Modern Surface
Publication dates
Published2018

Related outputs

The white-clad people: The white hanbok and Korean nationalism
Lee, Y. 2022. The white-clad people: The white hanbok and Korean nationalism. Cultural Dynamics. 34 (4), pp. 271-296. https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740221117811

Eyes in the skin I live in: The incorporation of surveillance in mediatized culture
Lee, Yeseung 2022. Eyes in the skin I live in: The incorporation of surveillance in mediatized culture. Fashion Theory. 26 (2), pp. 185-210. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2019.1697509

Текстиль-сфера (Textile-Sphere): порог повседневных взаимодействий
Lee, Yeseung 2021. Текстиль-сфера (Textile-Sphere): порог повседневных взаимодействий. Теория моды: одежда, тело, культура (Fashion Theory, Russian edition). 62 (April), pp. 162-187.

Distinction by indistinction: luxury, stealth, minimalist fashion
Lee, Yeseung 2021. Distinction by indistinction: luxury, stealth, minimalist fashion. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption. 6 (3), pp. 203-225. https://doi.org/10.1080/20511817.2021.1897265

The Textilesphere: The threshold of everyday contacts
Lee, Yeseung 2020. The Textilesphere: The threshold of everyday contacts. Textile: Cloth and Culture. 18 (2), pp. 160-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759756.2019.1652429

Textilesphere: To mark is to be marked
Lee, Yeseung 2018. Textilesphere: To mark is to be marked. Textile and Place. Manchester Metropolitan University 12 - 13 Apr 2018

Rethinking luxury through the handmade
Lee, Y. 2017. Rethinking luxury through the handmade. Animate Objects: Encounters between People and Things. Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge 13 Oct 2017

Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text
Lee, Y. 2016. Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text. Studies in Material Thinking. 14 Paper 06.

The Authentic Surface: Making Garments, Selves and Others
Lee, Yeseung 2016. The Authentic Surface: Making Garments, Selves and Others. In Pursuit of Luxury 2. LIM College, New York 06 May 2016

Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text
Lee, Yeseung 2016. Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text. Studies in Material Thinking. 14 Paper 06.

Seamlessness: Making and (Un)Knowing in Fashion Practice
Lee, Yeseung 2016. Seamlessness: Making and (Un)Knowing in Fashion Practice. Bristol and Chicago Intellect.

Seaming Hands: The Meaning and Value of the Handmade in Contemporary Fashion
Lee, Yeseung 2015. Seaming Hands: The Meaning and Value of the Handmade in Contemporary Fashion. Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption. 2 (1), pp. 61-80. https://doi.org/10.1080/20511817.2015.11428565

The Ambiguity of Seamlessness: The Skin Ego and the materiality of fashion
Lee, Yeseung 2015. The Ambiguity of Seamlessness: The Skin Ego and the materiality of fashion. Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty. 6 (1), pp. 75-93. https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb.6.1.75_1

Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text
Lee, Yeseung 2014. Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text. The Art of Research V: Experience, Materiality, Articulation Conference. Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland 26 - 27 Nov 2014 Empirica.

The Poetics of Self-fashioning: Between nonsense and meaning
Lee, Yeseung 2014. The Poetics of Self-fashioning: Between nonsense and meaning. Fashion in fiction: style stories and transglobal narratives. City University of Hong Kong, China 12 - 14 Jun 2014

The Skin, the Garment Surface and the Production of Modern Magic
Lee, Yeseung 2014. The Skin, the Garment Surface and the Production of Modern Magic. Association of Art Historians 40th Anniversary Annual Conference. Historians 40th Anniversary Annual Conference. Royal College of Art, London 11 - 12 Apr 2014 Association of Art Historians.

Permalink - https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/vqv14/apparition-the-im-materiality-of-modern-surface


Share this

Usage statistics

58 total views
0 total downloads
These values cover views and downloads from WestminsterResearch and are for the period from September 2nd 2018, when this repository was created.