Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I.D

Living in Holland can be quite quite hard sometimes , because of the influx of international students that is quite big there is a strong international mix ; Anyway I had been swaping places from aproximatley three to three mounts and it was quite a rush . The first thing that I felt because of moving was someting related to Romanian culture and Balkan culture in general , the gipsy phenomenon , beeing more specific I felt like a lost gipsy that is moving and searching for a new home with all the clichees that are atached to this kind of lifestyle , more to that Romania is in general associated with gipsy culture that is strongy known in the western society because after the fall of the comunism in 89 it was the only cultural eport that Romania had to give to the west so it is attached more or less to the Romanian identity . But identity is a bigger issue when it comes to living in an international space , you become a nomad a "gipsy" that has to change places you live an unstable life there are not to many certain things that can constant in your life , you start questioning the value of material belongings and the fact that they can stand in your way sometimes , in the same time because of the contact that you have with outer people that are from different cultures with different habbits and way of socializing . Afer a while you wake up from this rush and you start thyinking about who you are, and if you can consider yorself part of the population that you was part of and that gave you an identity ; things change in your thinking pattern and in some cases memes are taking over . Memes are culturaly replicant structures that take over in social situations , that means that subcociously we learn one from the outher things related to behaiour pattern , body movement and culture in general , So after a long contact with people that are from different parts of the world have different skin , language and behaviour you wake up and realise that you are a mix of things and in that mix you have to find your own identity and state of mind . In a lot of cases things can go smooth and become somekind of evolution , fases trough witch you cross and that change you , in outher cases you can realise the biggness of the world and the multiracial space witch surrounds you . In some cases isolation can occur and for some people things go opposite , things tend to go towards a traditional direction features of theyr home culture becomming more and more important and accentuated ,and the integration is produced only on a professional level. This tipe of behaviour I think can't be jujjed because traditions can be impoartant and can generate arround them comunities that trough theyr tradition can transmit historical values forward in time . This kind of traditional thinking can generate vernacular architecture or some tipe of visual language . In a lot of cases there can be made connexions between fashion creations and traditional culture , in a lot of cases fashion designers are inspired by traditional creations that are translated afterwords into fashion that is appealing to a broad public, Traditional pattersn in a lot of cases have some kind of basic visual language that can be metamorfed into fashion . In urban enviroments fashion can come from the street but in many cases the things that are weared on the street can be inspired by the things that are showed on the catwalks .
Identity can be represented trough many forms , the identity of one individual can be dictated by a group that shares the same values or has the same tipe of dressing code , In urban culture the things that generate a group or identity are related to fashion , musique, visual preferences or the coolnes factor that is more or less important . We live in a free world where things are dominated by brands , cool hunters , trendsetters and outher things that bare related to morfing and conitinuosly changing and unstable .
becoming an observer for a short period of time I see things sometimes labeled and with a product like aura this observation or remark makes me think that this is the new urban traditionalism .

No comments: