To call something ornamental is to already have made a judgement. It means the thing has been evaluated and found wanting: decorative rather than functional. But this verdict tends to have been taken for granted, pre-loaded into the language we use before we\u2019ve carefully thought about what we\u2019re dismissing. Ornaments are the non-essential, the disposable, the things we can live without. We say this, yet we inherit and treasure all the rituals around them and ensure their long life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Issue 13 starts from the curiosity of this inner conflict within \u201cornament\u201d, a tightly-wound paradox of objects we simultaneously hold and dismiss. Ornaments are relational, their meaning comes alive through context, but more specifically, culture. This issue foregrounds the ornament, and introduces the world around them through literary, artistic, poetic, and technological perspectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pieces in this issue are varied in approach, but each generates an object of curiosity. Some work by making the background visible: embroideries<\/a> that lift floral patterns from the clothing of strangers on the street, or the tire vulcanizer shops<\/a> in Ghana whose roadside displays have become part of the visual grammar of the street – functional objects that have transitioned into signs. Others work from inside systems that invite personalization as managed excess, as in a meditation<\/a> on WeChat’s customization culture, where communities forming around user-built themes reveal how much meaning people build in the spaces left open within interfaces. Another reveals the cruelty embedded in ornamental assignment<\/a> – the dismissal of political concerns in the Philippines and Brazil, rendered decorative by those who would rather not look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some pieces hold the paradox at the level of the object itself. A sculptor<\/a> makes work intended only to be photographed, objects that exist to become images rather than to be seen in the round. A poet layers multiple versions of the same poem<\/a> into a single composite text, making the act of revision visible as structure. One writer takes up “janky nails,” each embellishment navigating the line between ornament and apparatus. A web piece<\/a> decorates a dungeon, drawing on architectural references from Mrs. Dalloway to build something navigable, inhabitable, strange. And one essay<\/a> follows the life and death of a Christmas tree: its brief reign of tinsel and ceremony, its unceremonious exit onto the curb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In creating Issue 13, we hope to challenge readers to remember, single out, spotlight what adorns our lives, our thoughts, and the experiences we love\/hate. We challenge you to challenge functionality and the ostensibly endless cycle of production-consumption-production. We challenge you to sit, read, and re-read these pieces. Finally we ask, as we have all asked ourselves at Adjacent, What is your ornament?<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019d like to extend our thanks to our contributors for their patience, vulnerability, and incredible work in making this issue memorable for us. Another round of thanks to the editorial and design team, and to all the friends and peers that supported us during this issue’s development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To call something ornamental is to already have made a judgement. It means the thing has been evaluated and found wanting: decorative rather than functional. But this verdict tends to have been taken for granted, pre-loaded into the language we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":4910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4865"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4882,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions\/4882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}