The crash collection

The crash collection

The crash collection By Pericles Kondylatos

Available at Vassilis Zoulias Boutique & Attelier (Ακαδημίας 4, Αθήνα -Boutique: 210.3389.924 | Atelier : 210.7225613)

Autumn – Winter 2014 -2105

The crash collection By Pericles Kondylatos is an – one of a kind – collection in dark colors for the winter. Made by vintage car labels that have been collected by ruined cars which were involved in accidents.  The crash collection is the first ever of its’ kind in the world that has been created by such materials and in this concept of having fatal objects to decorate the body. The intention of the artist is to create beautiful necklaces, created by compartments that carry a doomed fate. This collection arouses many questions about beauty, mortality and vanity: Can the buyers see them independently of their background story? Is the fashion world a place to explore the idea of mortality, death & tragedy? Is there beauty in the grotesque? Can an accident become the source of beauty? Is really life a big re-cycle?

The crash collection: A tragedy redemption.

Inspired by “Symphorophilia” psychological disease

SYMPHOROPHILIA

Symphorophilia is a paraphilia in which sexual arousal hinges on staging and watching a disaster, such as a fire or a traffic accident.

The term was coined by John Money in his 1984 paper Paraphilias: Phenomenology and classification, formed from the Greek root "συμφορά" ("symphora"):[1]

A special form of sacrificial paraphilia, for which a suitable name is symphorophilia (being erotically turned on by accidents or catastrophes), culminates in an arranged disaster, such as an automobile crash. Like a game of Russian roulette, it may end in death — alone or with the partner. However, flirting with disaster, rather than suicide and murder is the trigger responsible for autoerotic arousal and excitement. Being the daredevil who will live to risk a love-death again is an essential part of this paraphilia.

As a photographic print is the positive made from its negative, so also the positive of self-crashing is arranging for a disaster to occur on the highway, and then watching the carnage from a preselected observation post. Disasters other than on the highway may be arranged — catastrophic fires, for example. For those members of the general public who have a touch of sadomasochism in them, disaster as an unrehearsed event is often a large part of the appeal of entertainment stunts and sports, from the circus to stock-car racing.

Car crash attraction

A curious case report from a 1960 edition of American Journal of Psychiatry describing a man who gets turned on by being injured by ‘an automobile operated by a woman’.

The patient, a man in his late twenties, reported a periodic desire to be injured by a woman operating an automobile. This wish, present since adolescence, he had by dint of great ingenuity and effort, gratified hundreds and times without serious injury or detection. Satisfaction could be obtained by inhaling exhaust fumes, having a limb run over on a yielding surface to avoid appreciable damage or by being pressed against a wall by the vehicle. Gratification was enhanced if the woman were attractive by conventional standards. Injuries afflicted by men operating autombiles or other types of injury inflicted by woman had no meaning. He experienced pleasure from the experience, thus establishing the symptom as a perversion rather than a compulsion. The patient’s sexual, social, and occupational adjustment was good and his intelligence superior. He intellectualized to a considerable extent but could experience and manage strong positive and negative feelings. He was ashamed of his symptom but somewhat proud of its unusual nature. A Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index did not demonstrate significant psychopathology and did not indicate the probable presence of perversion or impulse neurosis.The case could be classified as a type of symphorophilia – sexual arousal associated with disasters or accidents.