By ULF POSCHARDT

Destruction is happiness. Every text about destruction anticipates the joy of liberation that starts to flow following the act of destruction. Twentieth-century art has formally and aesthetically raised destruction to a new level. Robert Rauschenberg’s erasing of a de Kooning drawing only leaves dainty traces of devastation, whereas concept art has made the destruction of objects so matter of course, that it has made the creation of cloud-cuckoo-lands all the more constructive. Culturally speaking, it is always destruction that makes way for new creativity: it creates space. Even destructive acts follow the economy of growth and creation. Production and destruction are exact opposites, like life and death – intertwined and inseparable. Destruction in pop-culture and fashion is particularly positive. It is most liberating in interpersonal relations, because feelings and relationships can be disposed of in order to create new ones. The destruction of that which is, forms the constant of change. Destruction is organic. Its transfiguration, a touching form of aggression.

The beguiling charm of fashion is directly arrested to the destruction of that which exists. It lives from the destruction of that which exists – its change obeys the needs of capitalism just as it wishes to distract (the smallest unit of mental destruction) the bourgeoisie.

The grammar of destruction is becoming refined. In 1997, Martin Margiela, working alongside a number of biologists, put on an exhibition specializing on bacteria and its various capabilities. At the opening of the exhibition, Margiela showed his most important clothes in a seemingly conventional context. But already at this time the clothes were carrying their death in the form of bacteria. By the end of the exhibition the bacteria had completely destroyed and eaten away the clothes. The presentation was an act of enthusiastic self-disintegration that smacked more of self-confidence than of doubt. Destruction, as a basic condition of fashionable life, was made biological in a very direct way by Margiela. The presentation of decomposition as a symbol of fashionable immortality also raises fashion to a discourse power, allowed to organize itself and to help itself generously from all fields of science.

Years earlier Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of deconstructionism became fashionable, first in comparative literature, then also in architecture, art as well as in the interpretations thereof. Just like his role model, Heidegger, Derrida tried to obviously destroy western metaphysics, thus creating space for new thought processes, after the fortresses of the old terms and categories had fallen. Even though Derrida strictly (and dogmatically) rejected definition the form of an “ism,” like deconstructionism, he elaborated, in the forward to a book on architecture and philosophy, on how he could imagine the rigorous destructive spirit as being an interesting project. “One doesn’t deconstruct the superstructures with the goal of reaching the original ground or the lowest basis of an architecture or school of thought. One doesn’t try to return to purity or the actual state of the essence of architecture itself. One should use the patterns of the basis and the oppositions that it induces: ‘Basis/Surface’ or “Depth/Exterior,” “Substance/Quality” or “Material/Consistency,” “Nature/Accident,” “Inside/Outside” and above all “Basic Research/Specified Research,” although the last opposition carries considerable follow-up effects with it. In articles by architects that read Derrida, like Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman, one could observe all the certainties of architectural tradition and its grammar caving in. The fact, that in the end their constructions both worked and could be termed as being “Houses” or “Halls,” underscored that the destruction of the basic definition of architecture, being the aesthetic creation of room and living areas for humans, wasn’t put in question, thus it stopped short of questioning final certainties.

Derrida describes “The engagement of risk” with exacting clarity: “to consider the architectural or anarchitectural necessities, without destroying and without only having negative consequences. Of course the bottomless nature of a deconstructive and affirmative architecture can be dizzying, but it isn’t emptiness, it isn’t the gaping and chaotic rest, the hiatus of deconstruction. Conversely, it isn’t Heideggers destruction anymore, even if one must assume their project (…) Neither Babel, nor Nimrod, nor the flood. Rather another destructive influence as it is transmitted by definition from the aesthetic avantgarde. But differing from the patricide of the avant-garde, that mainly draws on the preceding ‘ism,’ deconstructionism tries to go deeper and uncover semantic differences. The result is a greater move toward freedom than the negation of the classic avant-garde could offer.

“Deconstructionism forms the framework, in which it is possible to go beyond that, which up to that point, had dominated architectural thought. Deconstruction however isn’t formed by the fact that it has distanced itself from its rule.”

Even though Rei Kawakubo never directly drew on the deconstructive aesthetic, her work can be effectively interpreted on the basis of this method. The product of destruction had to be sold as a commodity. Similar to architecture and a little different to philosophy, fashion design is functionally defined and has to assert itself as a product in the capitalist construct. The fashion departure in the early 80s wasn’t just a resonance basin for subcultural and cultural departures, but also caused an adjustment of the markets to new target groups, that until then hadn’t been served sufficiently, if at all, by the existing range of products. Rei Kawakubo takes clothes to their undoing – this being the nature of deconstruction. Two decisive sources are cubist sculptures and punk. Both sources share a positive destructive impulse. While cubist sculpture employed the juxtaposition of various perspectives to deconstruct the oldfashioned central perspective, Punk was able to change the determination of what was considered beautiful and ugly, what valuable and what worthless. Both movements shook the world and undermined old certainties that people had gotten used to. Comme des Garçons’ fashion is the living proof of how painful such a process can be.

Rei Kawakubo exhibits the wounds in her designs. She slashes the intact surfaces of her costumes like a serial-killer and lets cloth flow like blood through the wounds of her dresses: piercing colors and wild, billowing patterns. The cloth scars in the form of cuts, and the healing process in that of seams, bandages, belts and zippers, visualizes more effectively than architecture, how so called deconstructionism must be biologically understood: the surgical operations in intact objects, in this case clothing, causes wounds that in turn heal with organic growths. The camouflage tape of the newest show, works like a bandage. CDG’s mountains of cloth, like ulcers, give the impression that silk, cashmere and cotton reproduce through cell division. The organism of the dress seems to complete itself.

While architects and theorists tend to stress the mechanical side of deconstruction, Rei Kawakubo is interested in the organic dynamic of this way of working. Her sensitive fashion-organisms seem vulnerable. The silhouettes are tenderly presented and thus hide the vehemence of the intrusions that Rei Kawakubo makes on the normal way of tailoring dresses and suits. For Rei Kawakubo, deconstruction isn’t simply a stylish gloss over an otherwise conventional design, but rather it is implemented with analytical precision and technical expertise. No one can destroy his own work more beautifully than the Japanese designer.

In the fashion industry, acts of destruction are like boats on an endless sea of production and originality. The destruction is carried by a positive creative impulse. Merely destruction in the sense of extermination wrests itself free from the dialectic regard of the destructive. The art is, and that is what art in the last century tried to do, to approach the edge of the dangerous black hole and look over the side. It can be pulled in. Heroes like Konrad Bayer, Sid Vicious or Rudolf Schwarzkogler were sucked in. The pull of destruction all the way to extermination is the exception.