Taryn

As I read this article I kept thinking about fashion. I was thinking how fashion designers are constantly using "preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble" (I was not lead to this idea because of the word ensemble!). As I continued and read how "detournement is a game made possible by the capacity of devaluation" I started thinking about this idea of art and culture making its way to our clothes and how this everyday use is, in a way, a devaluation of something that was once precious - (art, color, form, etc) - now made common (through everyday wear). This became more clear to me as the article states about the expression of "our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original and concern itself with rendering a certain sublimity" . Fashion is the perfect example of something that is "a combination of parody and seriousness [that] reflects the contradictions of an era in which we find ourselves confronted with both the urgent necessity an the near impossibility of initiating and carrying out a totally innovative collective action". All the time now fashion is attempting to make a difference - like the GAP's adds to help research of AIDS through it's "innovative" red campain (of course the GAP invented red!). Fashion is a means of expression weather it is simply the words you wear (like TWCDC) or a blatent screaming of status (like GUCCI).

I think that people today are so inundated with consumerism that they start to redefine art as what they buy. We have all become collectors of things and these things are defining culture and taste and history. There is such a shift of what is important that it is changing our thoughts on the everyday. As we looked through advertisements during class it just validated my thoughts about Detournement and what Berger wrote about advertising and art history. Our adds are mimicking art and comprising different elements to create a parody that devalues each of the different aspects - creating a new scope and effect. That said it seems apparent that Advertising is an example of Detournment - I feel that fashion is the extension of these adds to a new level of reality - we become the living Detournement.