Atmosphere over form
The Goth tradition allows you to mix imagery, symbols and styles to your heart’s content. The result is an emphatic atmosphere, which stimulates the imagination and creates darkness. Goth isn’t a style in the traditional sense but a feeling. It’s not about form but atmosphere.
Nona Limmen, “Children of the Night (Sint-Janskathedraal ‘s-Hertogenbosch)”, 2019. C/o Nona Limmen.
One of the most important mood-evoking elements in the Gothic tradition is often defined as ‘haunting’. The suggestion of a ghost coming from the past to disturb the present is a typically Gothic motif. Ruins are a frequent symbol in this regard: with the right mood and atmosphere, a crumbling church or temple becomes a melancholy site of decay or else a frightening labyrinth, in which the dead return to life.
“Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation.” — Horror author H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927
Atmosphere is often more important than literal content in the Gothic tradition. In the late 19th century, Symbolist artists and writers created fanciful, mysterious works that were not meant as literal representations of reality. It was up to viewers and readers themselves to supply part of the meaning of these disturbing images. This play with atmosphere and imagination was heralded by the work of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, or even that of the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.
And in our own time, the dark and atmospheric imagination continues to inspire online fantasy art and video games, among others. Many contemporary musicians too pursue a particular atmosphere in their own way through theatrical stage performances and music videos.
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So Posthuman (3): Monstrous humans and human monsters
Afgerukte ledematen, ontbindende lijken en afstotelijke monsters. Net als in het posthumanisme staat in gothic het lichaam centraal. Toevallig? Volgens curator Tomas van den Heuvel niet.
Identity and community
From the exposition: goth is a battleground for the great issues of identity, individual and community. Now, and already in the nineteenth century.
The dark mirror of the soul
From the exhibition: a sublime nature in this sense features prominently in the Gothic tradition, not only as a setting for elusive mysteries or unspeakable secrets, but also as a protagonist in its own right.
An invented past
From the exhibition: in the Gothic tradition, historyis exaggerated, twisted or straightforwardly invented. The past on which Goth is based is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy and reality.
The theatre of authenticity
From the exhibition: Goth eagerly pursues a sense of authenticity and is not afraid to evoke it artificially.
Dark technology
From the exhibition: new technologies help to visualize the dark sense of life in constantly changing ways, although it is frequently the shortcomings of such technology – scratches on the film or fading of the photograph – that give a ‘Gothic feel’ to an image.
The haunted city
From the exhibition: the threatening, impersonal and all-consuming metropolis shaped the Gothic imagination of this uncertain period. It is a form of the Gothic where fear of the future becomes entangled with the dread of the past.
Alternatieve stereotypes
From the exhibition: the Goth subculture experiments like no other with gender, sexuality and style, finding new meanings for old stereotypes through endless combinations.
