FACTION is the idea of a poetic crack in the dailyness of your life.
Discovering the blue sky, the poetry of art, the magic of fashion or creating your own unusual objects brings FACTION to life.
It’s discovery and creation represent a break. An elegant cut.
A hack, that changes how you perceive your present and in best case also the future to come.
FACTION is the moment, the shift and also the result of your hack.
It might be glamorous, eccentric, subversive and poetic.
FACTION can be discovered but created as well. It can be conceived or coincidental.
FACTION can be small or huge, it can have historical or very personal depth.
What does „FACTION" really mean?
Let me introduce this wonderfully composed neologism: Some years ago I read „Allure“, the autobiography of Diana Vreeland, legendary fashion figure of the 20th century. As an editor (Harper’s Bazar & US Vogue) and fashion consultant (at the Met’s Costume Institute) Vreeland had a lot to tell. But even when writing about the rich events of her life, she at one point just stated, that her autobiography was and needed to be full of FACTION – of a combination of FACTS and FICTION. So what she did, was to take the real events of her life and give them a touch of glam, eccentricity and magic.
Sounds wonderful, right? But the question is: How do you translate that concept into your own story? What can be worth a fairy tale in your daily life?
Well, it’s not the big money, glam jobs nor celebrity friends. As always, it’s the small things that create your personal fiction. A fiction full of poetic possibilities.
Discover the BLUE
I discovered my own FACTION years ago in Paris (where else!). From 2002 I was studying Fashion Design there at Esmod. This may sound glamorous, but it was also a tough time. I had left Vienna all alone ambitiously at sweet 18. School was really hard, with the French language and Parisian mentality on top. So there was a lot of will but a lot of tears as well.
One day I was walking to the Metro from school around 6 pm, exhausted & frustrated, and just like that looked up to the sky.
And the sky was BLUE – like super blue somehow.
It was a wonderful color, neither dark nor bright, neither cyan nor indigo.
Diving into the sky I felt really well all of a sudden. Somehow taken away from my rather stern reality. And immediately fascinated and inspired.
Of course, I am talking about the so-called „l’heure bleue“, which I at that moment did not know existed as a term (… and of course my blog logo’s BLUE is this sky’s BLUE).
Be RECEPTIVE
So, the first answer to our FACTION project is: Be receptive for the beauty around you. Your pinch of fiction might come as a surprise, it might be small or huge and yes, it might be blue.
Being surprised by something beautiful is likely to change your state of mind.
It changes how you perceive your present and in best case also the future moments to come.
SURREALISM as pure FACTION
This moment of transformative surprise resembles very much to Alice falling down the rabbit hole. And thinking about Lewis Carroll’s fabulous story, we also need to talk about it’s (art) consequences, since they are very close to our blue moment.
FACTION is what happened when some rather unconventional guys met in 1916 and turned the art world upside down.
Shortly afterwards Marcel Duchamp exhibited his urinal in an art exhibition. And Max Ernst therefore dropped a string on a canvas to find his painting’s motive. And René Magritte therefore combined daily objects with the wrong terms.
They all took a system’s values and deviated them by adding surprise, subversion and magic. So dadaism’s and surrealism’s codes are a wonderful source of factionate enchantment!
Discover and create your own RABBIT HOLE
Finding your own rabbit hole is the credo – whatever thing might present the rabbit hole for you. And don’t feel intimidated by those huge names of Art History. FACTION can be DISCOVERED as well as CREATED easily.
Where to start?
Let’s stay with ART first: Avantgarde in its core, art is full of FACTION potential! Visiting museums, enjoying performances and finding your own favorite artists is the simple recipe.
Watch out for FASHION as well! It’s not only about clothes. Fashion is often fairy either by a NARRATIVE DESIGN or by a PERFORMATIVE STAGING.
On the other hand FACTION is not only about discovering, it’s also about creating. It’s when you get active that the real magic happens.
You can design your own clothes, imagine accessories or interior pieces. It’s easier than you’d think.
And you can also create your own standpoint and articulate it. Have your own opinion and make your own choices. Sounds obvious, sounds trivial, but surprising people with an own, unconventional opinion is pure FACTION. Even more so as a woman (unfortunately).
