Mark Joseph O’Connell
Biographic Data
| ID | 5154409 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Joseph O’Connell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | O’Connell |
| SIGNATURE | O’CONNELL M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Twitter (United States) |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1027-9338 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
“Always in Fashion”: Indigenous Fashion as Politics, Beauty, and Futurity at the Textile Museum of Canada (May 1, 2026, to January 3, 2027)
No more martyrs
This article examines the cultural significance of Heated Rivalry (2025–present), arguing that it is a decisive break from the long-standing narrative tradition in which queer male desire is legitimized through suffering, loss or death. Situating the series within a historical lineage of queer representation: from classical Hollywood coding and AIDS-era tragedy to prestige cinema’s aesthetics of respectable suffering, the article argues that Heat…
Dressing for the End of Time
Simulacra in Silk
This article reimagines the representation of “female” robots through the lens of fashion, exploring how the female-coded machine moves from fantasy object to theoretical agent. Anchoring the discussion in the Maison Margiela Artisanal 2024 show by John Galliano, where models emerged as porcelain-faced, sculpturally swathed automatons, it argues that fashion can be a powerful site for re-performing gender and identity. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …
Encoding Fashion, Decoding Identity
Rich relations
From its earliest roots, art was used to codify and communicate what is fashionable, powerful and luxurious. Recently, however, through institutional mega art projects like the Fondation LV and the Fondazione Prada, fashion seeks not just to legitimize itself, but to position itself as patron-cum-collaborator. Up until now the art world has been happy to take the money, but has been ambivalent towards the commercialization that co-branding brings…
Face first
This article explores the design work and life of the New York based make-up artist Way Bandy. The beauty iconography created by Bandy is an important cultural record as it was imbricated within the larger glamour tropes of the 1970s and the draped, dancing luxury of disco divahood (explored through practice-led research in this article as well). Modes of dress, display and deportment often reflect much larger societal messages and meanings, and …
Natural Practices
This article describes two research residencies undertaken at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) during the months of August and October 2019, wherein Dr. Mark Joseph O’Connell looked specifically at weaving and dye techniques found in a form of ceremonial dancing blanket called the Chilkat. The examination of these artifacts provides valuable information on pre-colonial First Nations industry, the ongoing impacts of colonial processes…
Fashion Remains
Mapping Very-High-Resolution Evapotranspiration from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Imagery
There is a growing concern about water scarcity and the associated decline in Australia’s agricultural production. Efficient water use as a natural resource requires more precise and adequate monitoring of crop water use and irrigation scheduling. Therefore, accurate estimations of evapotranspiration (ET) at proper spatial–temporal scales are critical to understand the crop water demand and uptake and to enable optimal irrigation scheduling. Remo…
Succès de Scandale
Succès de Scandale , the manipulation of outcry over the deliberately shocking, has been used frequently to garner notoriety and fame in the past. Currently, fashion brands are notorious for dropping crypto-offensive items into their marketing and then backing off with a meagre apology when customers react with legitimate offence. Social media hashtags generate viral visibility, and the associated brand is amplified exponentially. Engaging in thi…
Y Sin Embargo Te Quiero” (And Yet, I Love You)
The colonial project of redistributing secondhand clothing globally can be seen fully realized in the current manifestation of the trans-global distribution of secondhand garments. In Havana however, the Clandestina brand brilliantly subverts this process. Their products are made up of old t-shirts and garments that originated in North America and Europe and were purchased cheaply through government-run Cuban stores. These are then re-cut and re-…
Traditional weaving cultures in a global market
Carpets woven in Mexico today use design elements found at historical sites in the vicinity of their manufacture, and local Indigenous weaving techniques function within an unbroken line of traditional familial wisdom. The weaving culture of the Zapotec Nation of Oaxaca now exists at the juncture of multivalent competing visual, economic and cultural mediators, which makes for a compelling case study to examine the impacts of globalization, as we…
Lux Perpetua
Could the future of fashion be found in the past? As a result of the cumulative negative effects of over-consumption of fashion globally and the commensurate resource depletion this requires, as well as the sometimes catastrophic impacts on the laborers who make them, the accelerated pace of current fast fashion systems are now fundamentally unsustainable. There are however fashion producers who are putting sustainability at the forefront of thei…
Sweetarts
Camp, historically a coded communication of queer identity has been recently dragged out of the closet and into the limelight with the exhibition “Camp, Notes on Fashion” (2019) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While a lot of the fashion that was on display was kitschy, and certainly fun and clever, some of it left the exhibition vulnerable to criticism that it was not actually Camp. Also, an exhibition like this while overtly very …
Beauty in a Box
The best theory of beauty is its history. Thinking about the history of beauty means focusing on its deployment in the hands of specific communities.Susan Sontag, “An Argument About Beauty” from At
Don't Act, Don't Tell
The author describes anti-homosexual attitudes in the entertainment industry. Effeminate male actors generally have a hard time being cast, whether for gay or straight roles. Attitudes in the performing arts mirror those in society as a whole. Case reports are interspersed in the discussion to illustrate the points
How to handle eternity’
This essay examines the importance of the notion of infinity to the work of Flann O'Brien and Jorge Luis Borges. Using as a starting point their shared interest in the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne's highly eccentric theories about the ‘multidimensional’ nature of time, the essay goes on, through a close analysis of a number of Borges' stories and of O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, to call attention to a fundamental affinity betwee…
History and Art
Subjective Reality, Objective Reality, Modes of Relatedness, and Therapeutic Action
This paper describes a dialectic believed to be at the heart of therapeutic interaction within a relational model. The dialectic consists of the interrelationship of two modes: the dyadic and the triadic. In the dyadic mode, the analyst responds with aspects of his or her self that singularly reflect the patient's subjectivity. This mode of attunement is uniquely suited to bringing the patient's experience into a place where it can then be seen a…
Traditional weaving cultures in a global market
Carpets woven in Mexico today use design elements found at historical sites in the vicinity of their manufacture, and local Indigenous weaving techniques function within an unbroken line of traditional familial wisdom. The weaving culture of the Zapotec Nation of Oaxaca now exists at the juncture of multivalent competing visual, economic and cultural mediators, which makes for a compelling case study to examine the impacts of globalization, as we…
Sweetarts
Camp, historically a coded communication of queer identity has been recently dragged out of the closet and into the limelight with the exhibition “Camp, Notes on Fashion” (2019) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While a lot of the fashion that was on display was kitschy, and certainly fun and clever, some of it left the exhibition vulnerable to criticism that it was not actually Camp. Also, an exhibition like this while overtly very …
How to handle eternity’
This essay examines the importance of the notion of infinity to the work of Flann O'Brien and Jorge Luis Borges. Using as a starting point their shared interest in the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne's highly eccentric theories about the ‘multidimensional’ nature of time, the essay goes on, through a close analysis of a number of Borges' stories and of O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, to call attention to a fundamental affinity betwee…
Subjective Reality, Objective Reality, Modes of Relatedness, and Therapeutic Action
This paper describes a dialectic believed to be at the heart of therapeutic interaction within a relational model. The dialectic consists of the interrelationship of two modes: the dyadic and the triadic. In the dyadic mode, the analyst responds with aspects of his or her self that singularly reflect the patient's subjectivity. This mode of attunement is uniquely suited to bringing the patient's experience into a place where it can then be seen a…
Subjective Reality, Objective Reality, Modes of Relatedness, and Therapeutic Action
This paper describes a dialectic believed to be at the heart of therapeutic interaction within a relational model. The dialectic consists of the interrelationship of two modes: the dyadic and the triadic. In the dyadic mode, the analyst responds with aspects of his or her self that singularly reflect the patient's subjectivity. This mode of attunement is uniquely suited to bringing the patient's experience into a place where it can then be seen a…
How to handle eternity’
This essay examines the importance of the notion of infinity to the work of Flann O'Brien and Jorge Luis Borges. Using as a starting point their shared interest in the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne's highly eccentric theories about the ‘multidimensional’ nature of time, the essay goes on, through a close analysis of a number of Borges' stories and of O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, to call attention to a fundamental affinity betwee…
History and Art
Don't Act, Don't Tell
The author describes anti-homosexual attitudes in the entertainment industry. Effeminate male actors generally have a hard time being cast, whether for gay or straight roles. Attitudes in the performing arts mirror those in society as a whole. Case reports are interspersed in the discussion to illustrate the points
Lux Perpetua
Could the future of fashion be found in the past? As a result of the cumulative negative effects of over-consumption of fashion globally and the commensurate resource depletion this requires, as well as the sometimes catastrophic impacts on the laborers who make them, the accelerated pace of current fast fashion systems are now fundamentally unsustainable. There are however fashion producers who are putting sustainability at the forefront of thei…
Sweetarts
Camp, historically a coded communication of queer identity has been recently dragged out of the closet and into the limelight with the exhibition “Camp, Notes on Fashion” (2019) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While a lot of the fashion that was on display was kitschy, and certainly fun and clever, some of it left the exhibition vulnerable to criticism that it was not actually Camp. Also, an exhibition like this while overtly very …
Beauty in a Box
The best theory of beauty is its history. Thinking about the history of beauty means focusing on its deployment in the hands of specific communities.Susan Sontag, “An Argument About Beauty” from At
Mapping Very-High-Resolution Evapotranspiration from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Imagery
There is a growing concern about water scarcity and the associated decline in Australia’s agricultural production. Efficient water use as a natural resource requires more precise and adequate monitoring of crop water use and irrigation scheduling. Therefore, accurate estimations of evapotranspiration (ET) at proper spatial–temporal scales are critical to understand the crop water demand and uptake and to enable optimal irrigation scheduling. Remo…
Succès de Scandale
Succès de Scandale , the manipulation of outcry over the deliberately shocking, has been used frequently to garner notoriety and fame in the past. Currently, fashion brands are notorious for dropping crypto-offensive items into their marketing and then backing off with a meagre apology when customers react with legitimate offence. Social media hashtags generate viral visibility, and the associated brand is amplified exponentially. Engaging in thi…
Y Sin Embargo Te Quiero” (And Yet, I Love You)
The colonial project of redistributing secondhand clothing globally can be seen fully realized in the current manifestation of the trans-global distribution of secondhand garments. In Havana however, the Clandestina brand brilliantly subverts this process. Their products are made up of old t-shirts and garments that originated in North America and Europe and were purchased cheaply through government-run Cuban stores. These are then re-cut and re-…
Traditional weaving cultures in a global market
Carpets woven in Mexico today use design elements found at historical sites in the vicinity of their manufacture, and local Indigenous weaving techniques function within an unbroken line of traditional familial wisdom. The weaving culture of the Zapotec Nation of Oaxaca now exists at the juncture of multivalent competing visual, economic and cultural mediators, which makes for a compelling case study to examine the impacts of globalization, as we…
Fashion Remains
Rich relations
From its earliest roots, art was used to codify and communicate what is fashionable, powerful and luxurious. Recently, however, through institutional mega art projects like the Fondation LV and the Fondazione Prada, fashion seeks not just to legitimize itself, but to position itself as patron-cum-collaborator. Up until now the art world has been happy to take the money, but has been ambivalent towards the commercialization that co-branding brings…
Face first
This article explores the design work and life of the New York based make-up artist Way Bandy. The beauty iconography created by Bandy is an important cultural record as it was imbricated within the larger glamour tropes of the 1970s and the draped, dancing luxury of disco divahood (explored through practice-led research in this article as well). Modes of dress, display and deportment often reflect much larger societal messages and meanings, and …
Natural Practices
This article describes two research residencies undertaken at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) during the months of August and October 2019, wherein Dr. Mark Joseph O’Connell looked specifically at weaving and dye techniques found in a form of ceremonial dancing blanket called the Chilkat. The examination of these artifacts provides valuable information on pre-colonial First Nations industry, the ongoing impacts of colonial processes…
Encoding Fashion, Decoding Identity
“Always in Fashion”: Indigenous Fashion as Politics, Beauty, and Futurity at the Textile Museum of Canada (May 1, 2026, to January 3, 2027)
No more martyrs
This article examines the cultural significance of Heated Rivalry (2025–present), arguing that it is a decisive break from the long-standing narrative tradition in which queer male desire is legitimized through suffering, loss or death. Situating the series within a historical lineage of queer representation: from classical Hollywood coding and AIDS-era tragedy to prestige cinema’s aesthetics of respectable suffering, the article argues that Heat…
Dressing for the End of Time
Simulacra in Silk
This article reimagines the representation of “female” robots through the lens of fashion, exploring how the female-coded machine moves from fantasy object to theoretical agent. Anchoring the discussion in the Maison Margiela Artisanal 2024 show by John Galliano, where models emerged as porcelain-faced, sculpturally swathed automatons, it argues that fashion can be a powerful site for re-performing gender and identity. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …
Art (12 works) · Fashion and Cultural Textiles (12 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Visual arts (8 works) · Crafts, Textile, and Design (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works)