Keyword – visual styles

Keszeg, Anna:

Trash, Post-Soviet Aesthetics, Craftsmanship

This paper analyses the labels of global visual culture in general, and in the fashion industry in particular, with regard to Eastern Europe. It is to develop a framework of criteria that exposes techniques of colonisation and self-colonisation. It explores five visual stylistic layers, including trash, folk motifs, post-Soviet aesthetics, brutalism, and DIY culture. These categories have been defined and refined using generative artificial intelligence. Each phenomenon is examined through a representative case study. It also addresses the ‘New East’ label, which reflects on these labelling practices as a kind of forceful concept. The analysis seeks to uncover the dynamics between banal Eastern Europeanism and self-colonisation.

Keywords: Eastern Europeanism, folk, self-colonisation, trash, visual styles