Kate Hinchey-Day

In my final year I did I deep dive into Vancouver’s goth scene, creating a body of work that explores what it means to be goth in Vancouver.

This body of work has two parts:

1. The Baby Bat Box, a welcome kit with everything you need to get started in the goth subculture as informed by my explorations of the Vancouver scene.
2. Vangoth a selection of work that reflects the experience of the Vancouver goth scene.

THE BABY BAT BOX

“Baby Bat” is what people in the goth scene call new goths who don’t yet know much about the subculture. The Baby Bat Box was created in response to some of the issues I noticed in Vancouver’s goth scene, that a lot of people who are interested in the subculture either don’t know where to get started or don’t feel like they’re goth enough to go to events without being excluded. Many people I talked to felt that you needed to spend a lot of money on gothic clothing to be goth, when it has always been a music based subculture with optional fashion.

My goal with this box was to keep it low cost and versatile, focusing on the music and the do-it-yourself origins of gothic fashion.

What’s in the Box?

THE BOX

A custom branded box with a bat-face checkerboard lining the interior.

Stickers/Music Recommendation Zine

Band stickers from eight goth bands are packaged in a zine that recommends an album and a song from each band. Each spread contains a brand consistent recreation of the album cover, a Spotify link to the song, a sticker for the band, and a short description of what the song sounds like.

Special thanks to Nil and Yuxiao for music recommendations.

SAFETY PINS

A reusable 3d printed box full of safety pins, shaped like a coffin with a cross made out of safety pins printed on the lid. Special thanks to the vampire magician (Joey) who helped me with the 3d printing.

BLACK T-SHIRT

A black t-shirt for cutting apart, the label says “Tear This T-Shirt Apart” which references the song Tear You Apart

Scissors

The velvet ribbon that wraps around the scissors and attaches the tag is long enough to be made into a choker.

Pin Set

Set of three pins, named after the song Release The Bats by The Birthday Party.

Patch

An embroidered patch with a bat design, the fence matches the fence on the outside of the box.

Black Nailpolish or “Talon Blackener”

Black nail polish can make any goth outfit look more put together.

Eyeliner

The branding for this eyeliner is based on a relatively common eyeliner look in goth spaces.

Makeup Planning Notebook

A notebook for planning goth makeup looks, cutting down on the number of times it takes to do (and redo goth) makeup.

VANGOTH

During the course of this project I developed a few different practices to keep myself grounded in the local goth community.

Illustration, Animation, and a Zine.

Illustration

Part of my practice was drawing portraits of attendees at various goth events along with lyrics from the song of their choice. This was to get me in touch with the kind of people who actually go to events and what kind of music they listen to, keeping the focus on the specific Vancouver goth scene. One of the local nights has a back alley where goths socialize and cool off from dancing. These portraits were my way of exploring that part of the local subculture.

Animation

It may surprise you to find out that dance is a huge part of the goth subculture. To capture this relationship between dance and the scene, I rotoscoped the unique movements of the night. I used this to create a flip book where different colours of paper represent the flashing lights, based on one of the goth events in Vancouver.

ZINE: ANATOMY OF A GOTH NIGHT

I put together some of my observations of the local scene into a zine that I brought to Descent, one of the local goth nights at the end of my project bringing the project full circle. The zine shows some of the different parts of a Vancouver goth night from getting ready to hanging out in the back alley.