Notebook on Cities and Clothes

“You live wherever you live,
you do whatever work you do,
you talk however you talk,
you eat whatever you eat,
you wear whatever clothes you wear,
you look at whatever images you see…

YOU’RE LIVING HOWEVER YOU CAN.
YOU ARE WHOEVER YOU ARE

“Identity”…
of a person,
of a thing,
of a place.

“Identity”,
The word itself gives me shivers.
It rings of calm, comfort, contentedness.
What is it, identity?
To know where you belong?
To know your self worth?
To know who you are?
How do you recognise identity?
We are creating an image of ourselves,
we are attempting to resemble this image…
Is that what we call identity?
The accord
between the image we have created
of ourselves
and… ourselves?
Just who is that. “ourselves”?

We live in the cities.
The cities live in us…
time passes.
We move from one city to another,
from one country to another.
We change languages,
we change habits,
we change opinions,
we change clothes,
we change everything.
Everything changes. And fast.
Images above all,

change faster and faster, and they have been multiplying at a hellish rate ever since the explosion that unleashed the electronic images, the very images that are now replacing photography.

We have learned to trust the photographic image. Can we trust the electronic image? With painting everything was simple. The original was unique and each copy was a copy, a forgery. With photography and then film it began to get complicated. The original was a negative, without a print it did not exist, just the opposite, each copy was the original.

But now, with the electronic image and soon the digital, there is no more negative and no more positive. The very notion of the original is obsolete. Everything is copied. All distinctions have become arbitrary. No wonder the idea of identity finds itself in such a feeble state. Identity is out. Out of fashion. Exactly.

Then, what is in vogue, if not fashion itself? By definition, fashion is always in. Identity and fashion; are the two contradictory?