Marcus Alfonsetti

Lecturer in Culture, Communication & Media at UCL

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

@marylinlima Thanks, Marylin – long time no speak. Looks like I’ve missed the cut-off, but never mind… I’ve got more than enough archives already. Hope you’re well!

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

The challenges:

"How can I begin anything new
with all of yesterday in me?"

—Leonard Cohen

"For last year's words
belong to last year's language.
And next year's words
await another voice."

—T.S. Eliot

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

@VictoriaFutures Its masculinity is quite interesting. The attention to shape, flow, and balance flirts with less traditionally masculine codes, but still reinforces a sort of stylised, self-conscious male swagger. Blur, Pulp, and Suede also leaned into the boyish, arty, even feminine.

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

@VictoriaFutures Maybe there's also a leaning by market tier. High-end experimental brands often favour the dark (e.g. McQueen, Owens, Margiela, Yamamoto). Mainstream brands are more likely to favour light but toy with dark seasonally. Then there's All Saints who packaged it for the mass market.

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

@VictoriaFutures Nice connection! (Great film, too)

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

@VictoriaFutures I arrived at similar conclusions after living in NY for a few years. Here's my exaggerated model:

US: You give me good energy, I give you good energy = win-win.
UK: You leave me alone, I leave you alone = win-win.
US→UK: Gives good energy, receives suspiciously cautious energy!

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

The challenges:

"How can I begin anything new
with all of yesterday in me?"

—Leonard Cohen

"For last year's words
belong to last year's language.
And next year's words
await another voice."

—T.S. Eliot

[Melodies & Masterpieces @SVG__Collection]

“One of the most important things in music is to understand the process of creating.”

— Bill Evans

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

"How could a historian come to believe that a fashion, an enthusiasm, an infatuation, or even exaggerations do not reveal, at a given moment, the existence of a productive nodal point in a culture?"

—Foucault

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

To my mind, the work of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wasn't without its limitations, but I think it's fair to say that his wager on the epoch-defining importance of simulation and hyperreality has proven to be right on the mark.

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

Patrick Nagel's 1980s aesthetic compared to Malika Favre's 2010s aesthetic. Who you got? 🙂

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

Intuition as method:

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

"I've always worked through a process of research. [...] [M]y stimulus is always academic."

—Vivienne Westwood

(An interview with Jon Savage in The Face, No 9, Jan 1981: 25-27)

[Samantha Rose Hill @Samantharhill]

A handwritten copy of Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, given to Hannah Arendt in Marseilles for safekeeping before he attempted to escape over the Pyrenees

Here is the Angelus Novus fragment

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

Geldzahler: What is your subject matter?

Basquiat: (pause) Royalty, heroism, and the streets.

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

D. Lowenthal's phrase 'The past is a foreign country' was perfect for the 1980s heritage turn, taken from LP Hartley's 1953 novel, The Go-Between. But not surprisingly, similar ideas came before. Here's Nietzsche's 1882 notion of 'Historia abscondita,' taken from The Gay Science:

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

"T. Eliot is toilet spelt backwards."

—Samuel Beckett

[Marcus Alfonsetti @drmalfonsetti]

Mayakovskian masculinity: