Reflections on the Ghost of Vivienne Westwood

Walking down the King's Road, one encounters many ghosts but I was still rather taken aback by the spectral image of Vivienne Westwood rising up before me: 

 

 

Vivienne Westwood by Invader (2024)  

 

Known for his ceramic tile mosaics based on the pixelated art of early 8-bit video games, the French street artist Invader [1] has created a spooky posthumous portrait of the iconic British fashion designer wearing a version of the Destroy shirt created in collaboration with her partner Malcolm McLaren. 

 

Readers familiar with the photo taken at Seditionaries upon which the portrait is based, will note how an alien figure has replaced the swastika and inverted crucifix of the original design:

 

 

Vivienne Westwood by Norma Moriceau (1977)

 

 

On entering the tiny store based at 430 King's Road - forever preserved in its final incarnation as Worlds End - one can't help but remember the dead: not just Vivienne, but Malcolm, Jordan, Sid, Debbie Wilson, Tracie O'Keefe ... et al.  

 

And one can't help wondering if there are ways of being haunted by the past which are vital and allow for a critical nostalgia which troubles the present and enables us to live yesterday tomorrow. 

 

To paraphrase Heidegger, mayn't it be the case that only a ghost can save us now ...? [2]

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Invader is a pseudonymous French street artist whose work can be found in major cities in numerous countries around the world, often in culturally and/or historically significant sites, although Paris remains the primary location for his work. 

      Often deriving inspiration from the video games he loved to play when growing up in the 1970s and '80s - Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Super Mario, etc. - he often publishes books (and maps) to accompany his installations (or 'invasions' as he calls them). 

      As one might imagine, like Banksy his works have attracted the attention of wealthy collectors and have sometimes been stolen to order off of the walls upon which they were installed (something he has tried to counteract by selecting sites that are more difficult to reach and creating larger works with more delicate tiles that cannot be removed without damaging the piece). When legitimaely sold in galleries, his work can fetch six-figure sums. 

      Shepard Fairey, again as one might imagine, was an early admirer, writing: 

      "Invader's pop art may seem shallow, but by taking the risk of illegally re-contextualizing video game characters in an urban environment that provides more chaotic social interaction than a gamer's bedroom, he makes a statement about the desensitizing nature of video games and consumer culture. In a postmodern paradox, a game like Grand Theft Auto takes the danger of the streets and puts it in a safe video game, while Invader takes a safe video game icon and inserts it into the danger of the streets." See Shepard Fairy, 'Space Invader', Swindle magazine, No. 3, 2004.

 

[2] Heidegger's famous statement - Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten - appeared in a 1966 interview with Der Spiegel, published posthumously in 1976. It reflects his belief that modern humanity is trapped in a crisis that cannot be resolved through human agency alone. 

      Not that he was referring by his use of the term 'god' to a traditional religious deity or a personal savior, anymore than by my use of ther term 'ghost' I am referring to a sheet-wearing apparition or supernatural entity in the clichéd sense. Like Heidegger, I'm calling upon an event outside of human control that triggers a radical and transformative cultural shift that allows for a new revealing or mode of being; or, like Mark Fisher in his hauntological writings, I'm referring to a manifestation of a lost future or a potentiality that has not been actualised.  

      The interview with Heidegger, conducted by Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff, was translated by William J. Richardson and can be found in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan (Transaction Publishers, 1981), pp. 45-67. Click here to read on the Internet Archive.  

      See Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Zero Books, 2022) - a work on which I published a three part post in November 2023: click here for part one on lost futures and here for part three on hauntology.   

 

Reflections on a Photo of Two Young Punks

Debbie Juvenile and Tracie  O'Keefe
(Seditionaries 1977) 

There are two reasons why I like this photograph ...

Firstly, there are the clothes: McLaren and Westwood's idiosyncratic designs looked fucking amazing back then and they look even more astonishing now. One forgets just how romantic and swashbuckling punk fashion was - and just how queer (using that word in its fullest sense, to mean strange and outlandish as well as sexually deviant in some manner). It was never really a style that came from the streets; it came, rather, from the extraordinary imaginations of Malcolm and Vivienne and made very little sense outside of the world of 430, Kings Road. Clothes for heroes - and clothes for weirdos.         

Secondly, there are the two girls: Debbie Juvenile and Tracie O'Keefe.* They seem unable to contain their pride and joy at looking so fabulous as they pose for the camera lens and actively transform themselves into an image. The fact that each is smiling - such a rare thing for a punk to do - provides the picture with a warmth and a charm that makes me love it and love them.   

If they look so young, it's because they were so young. And their youth - the freshness of faces, the whiteness of hands - also illuminates the image and arouses great affection in me (almost a kind of tenderness). But what gives it a special poignancy is the distressing knowledge that both girls are no longer living.

I look at this photo and see two lovely - if unconventional - young women, dressed in their punk finery; they would appear to have their whole lives ahead of them. But in the back of my mind is the thought: they are going to die ... This, of course, is the challenge and the scandal of every photo. Indeed, it might even be said death is the very essence of photography; that every snap is to some degree or other mortifying: A second of your life ruined for life.

However, as Roland Barthes points out, the photograph also powerfully attests to presence and to the reality of lives that have been. It doesn't merely remind us of the past, or preserve what was abolished by the passing of time. It forms an actual bridge between ourselves and the dead. Thus, you look at Debbie and Tracie and - although they are no longer physically with us - they manage nevertheless to affect those of us who are still here in the flesh; not as ghosts, but as tiny suns that continue to shine long after they have burned out.

To paraphrase Susan Sontag, the presence of the absent being touches me like the delayed rays of a fading star.


Notes

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard, (Hill and Wang, 1981).

*Both girls were early fans of the Sex Pistols and part of the so-called Bromley Contingent; both worked as sales assistants at Seditionaries; and both were arrested during the Sex Pistols' Jubilee gig on a Thames riverboat. Tracie, however, was the only one to be given a prison sentence (for assaulting a policeman), although she was later acquitted on appeal. Shockingy, she died the following year, from cancer, aged 18.

As for Debbie, she embodied the look and spirit of punk: it was Debbie who sold programmes on the Anarchy in the UK tour and it was Debbie who can be seen singing backing vocals on stage with the Sex Pistols auditioning for a new frontman in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Post-punk, she apparently drifted into the world of vice. Then she simply disappeared and is presumed dead.