RÉKA GÖTZ

UNIT 11 — DEGREE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

This is a private webpage, submitted in partial fulfillment of my BA (Hons) in Fashion Communication & Promotion at Central Saint Martins.

If you are not a tutor, please GO HOME.

SUGAR BUSH

IS A SUBURBAN PUBLICATION BY RÉKA GÖTZ

PREFACE

We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. —John O’Sullivan, 1839 Suburbia first staked its claim as a physical expression of the American Dream. In the late 1940s, real-estate pioneers fled to domesticate the countryside into a utopian “promised land,” as if the frontier had recrystallised in America’s backyard. Postwar aspiration sent neighbourhoods bleeding outward with fabulous indifference, while Manifest Destiny curdled into strip malls and bleached bread. (Thus began the exodus of White Anglo-Saxon America!) Suburban life quenched a thirst for something safer, more predictable. It had also sanctified an age-old Jeffersonian ideal: the romantic vision of neighbourliness, small-town democracy, and family enterprise. Entire communities were propelled by a crusade for homeostatic nirvana. Yet, in time, the suburbs had ceased to feel exceptional at all. They became the American default. In spite of its influence, suburbia remains under-examined as a cultural landscape. Instead, we observe a milieu so plastic, so panoramically dull... that its residue evades scrutiny. SUGAR BUSH was conceived as a mapping of suburban atmosphere. Inspired by the editor’s hometown of Wexford, Pennsylvania, its pages emphasise opacity, abundance, delusion, and strangeness — a spiritually provincial ethos.

WITH THANKS TO

Ellie Hoffmann
Faithe Nguyen
Joe Gardner
Julia Silverberg
Mark Borchardt
Michael Johnsen
Michael Vahrenwald
Rachel Ann Bovier
Rick Miller (Abe Lincoln)
The Pittsburgh Banjo Club

CONCEPT

STATEMENT OF INTENT

EDITORIAL PREMISE

My FMP will take the form of an experimental & unbound fashion publication. I aim to create a sort of artifact / almanac of the post-industrial suburbs through my own photographs, text, archival imagery, and obscure contributions from figures in my area. Sugar Bush is a delusional retelling of suburban life. The publication unfolds as a loose compendium of ideas, characters, and memories, while questioning the surrealism of a “suburban bubble” and the strangeness that exists within and around it. Collectively, 50 pages draw from a range of temporalities and landscapes that skirt the Rust Belt. Such landscapes include but are not limited to: Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe, Abandoned Dance Moms Studio, and the Hall of North American Wildlife. Contributors will include local figures such as the Amish community and a Trader Joe’s cardboard sign painter—commonly ignored “ghosts” of my hometown who have helped to shape my memory of home. Within my publication, adornment appears as both an everyday practice and an act of provocation. Personal style holds traces of class aspiration, inherited mythologies, and the strange experience of living within a nation whose promises are constantly being cantillated and unsettled.

TONE

Unsettling yet eerily familiar, with a dream-like visual language that navigates the atmospheres of my hometown in Western Pennsylvania.

AUDIENCE

Readers interested in fashion imagery, entertainment, poetry, and experimental artist publications. Americans and non-Americans alike!

INITIAL FLAT PLAN

03.26 THEMES

03.26

SUGAR BUSH reads like a dream... There is no aspiration to build a clear or logical narrative, the publication will read instead as loosely connected fragments of text and image. Through photography, illustration, appropriation, text, and poetry, I aim to address the following themes:

01. EMOTIONAL ATMOSPHERE

• Anxiety
• Absence & accumulation
• Fragile patriotism
• Security & surveillance
• Hedonism
• Bougeouis coldness
• Hope
• Aspiration & insecurity
• Suburban boredom
• Territorialism
• Exclusion / alienation

02. THE SUBURB AS A THRESHOLD

The suburb functions as a cultural threshold between identities, creating an uneasy atmosphere of competition and cultural mimicry.* UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS ASPIRATION• Old money / new money aesthetics
• Appropriation of prep culture
• Academic achievement and Ivy League persona
• Churchwear and formal dress
• Mall clothes (Lululemon, Tory Burch, business casual)* LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS IDENTITY• Family values and self-sufficiency
• Industrial labor and inherited trades
• Nationalism and heritage
• Workwear and hunting apparel

03. TERRITORIAL MARKERS

• Lawns
• Borders: Fences, property lines, etc.
• Domestic interiors: imperfections in the home, décor
• Security systems
• Artificial landscapes
• Frontiers
• Terrain vague
• Decay / obsolescence
• Parking lots, big box developments

04. OBJECTS (SUBURBAN ARTIFACTS)

• Spirit wear
• Lawn ornaments, seasonal décor
• Consumer objects (Starbucks, Stanley)
• Hunting gear, gun memorabilia
• Hometown hero signs
• Advertisements

LOGISTICS

03.26

01. SPECS • A4 / A3
• 50 loose pages, in a folder of sorts
• Varying paper stock? some offcuts
• 3-4 Poster pages

02. CONTENT

• Experimental text (prose, fiction, poetry, criticism / theory): 15-20% // 7-10 pages
• Images: 60% // 35 pages
• Archival Imagery: 20-30% // 10-15 pages

03. COLLABORATORS

• Julia Silverberg
• Sign painter
• Taxidermist
• Someone who worked on the set ofDesperate Housewives
• Dance Moms producer, Bryan Stinson?
• Model who worked in advertisements or catalogues
• Architectural theorist
• Political cartoonist
• Art critic

MEDIA KIT

04.26

CLICK HERE FOR PDF

This was made in order to give collaborators a better understanding of my publication.
It also forced me to flesh-out some initial details. Unfortunately, the listed timeline was WAYYYYYYY off the mark. (Aspirational!)

RUNNING IDEAS

04.26

01. POTENTIAL NAMES • Registrar
• Plat
• Landing
• Sugar Bush
• Heritage Meadows 02. CONTENT BRAINSTORM • Museum audio tour / map tour
• Combination animated & photography
• Presidential portrait
• Pin up
• False advertisements• Horizontal history
• Commission an airbrush illustrator or political comic person to draw an editorial
• Sign painter to do something
• Vintage doors series
• Printing straight ups on wrapper, foam cup, neckerchief
• Taxidermy / dead duck something
• Gutter shoot
• Inside Andy’s house (my dead grandpa)
• Something with gas station signage negative space
• Pinball arcade
• Photos cut out and passed on school window
• Photos of maps
• Small trees shoot
• Studio shoot of 70’s advertising studio shoot (meta)