MODE BEWEGT BILD: The Fashion Film Effect
2 October 2015–31 January 2016
Opening: 1 October, 8pm
Museum Angewandte Kunst
Schaumainkai 17
60594 Frankfurt / Main
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm,
Wednesday 10am–8pm
T +49 69 212 34037
F +49 69 212 30703
www.museumangewandtekunst.de
Blog
Fashion is an expression of the times in which it emerges. In view of the fact that there’s nothing at all unusual about shooting a film clip with one’s smartphone these days and sharing it with a global public, it’s hardly surprising that designers and fashion companies have begun using the medium of the Internet clip for their own purposes. Within that context, the boundaries between the advertising film and neighbouring genres, such as the music video or the art film, are becoming ever more fluid.
In the exhibition MODE BEWEGT BILD: The Fashion Film Effect, the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt/Main will be presenting a selection of 17 fashion films. What these works have in common is that, in movement, sound and visual effects, they far transcend the boundaries of the advertising film and other forms of fashion mediation, thus finding their way to an entirely new and independent genre. Each film in its own way expands the possibilities offered by traditional modes of fashion presentation, such as photography, illustration and the fashion show.
The selection of films to be featured in the show is extremely variegated with regard to form, content and style alike. Bizarre collages and graphic patterns will transport the visitors into worlds poetic, absurd and surreal. Alienated, convoluted, computer-animated bodies, fairy tale to nightmare-like images, barren landscapes: these are just a few of the motifs. In widely differing choreographies, an entire series is devoted to the interplay between fashion, dance and film. But the downsides of vanity, wealth and success will also be addressed, and the show will reflect on the role of clothing as an expression of personality and individuality, and even as a form of rebellion against society’s norms and constraints.
All of the films to be presented in the show play out the possibilities offered by the film medium to the fullest, departing increasingly from the actual object—fashion—in the process. At the extreme, the film shows no clothing at all, but aims instead to convey the mood and image of a fashion line or design vision. Just as fashion has always oscillated between merchandise and art object while at the same time uniting the two, the fashion films featured in our show also rise above their function as pure advertising media, shifting the focus to categories such as authorship and artistic expression.
“The Fashion Film Effect”—a term coined by the fashion theorist Marketa Uhlirova—is first and foremost a means of presenting clothing in motion. This intent is enhanced by the capacity of the film medium to expand fashion’s physical qualities to include further sensory elements, in which context experimental effects as well as sound and rhythm play fundamental roles. Particularly the non-narrative fashion film explores the creative possibilities of both fashion and film. The materiality of clothing is infinitely exponentiated into an elastic, polymorphous variable.
With:
Janus á Argjahøvda / Barbara ì Gongini, Daniel Arsham / Calvin Klein Collection, Daniel Askill / Alexander McQueen, Eliott Bliss / Lady Dior, Jamie Brunskill / Alexander McQueen, Matthew Donaldson / Stephen Jones Millinery, Kevin Frilet / Prada, Guðmundur Hallgrímsson / Mundi & 66° North, Ruth Hogben / Gareth Pugh, Mat Maitland / KENZO, Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones / Iris Van Herpen, Ish Sahotay / Little Boots, Jacob Sutton/Chalayan, Partel Oliva / KENZO, William Williamson
Director: Matthias Wagner K
Curator: Mahret Kupka
Partners and sponsors: B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, BfFF Berlin fashion Film Festival, AnOther Magazine, tape.tv, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain
Press contact: Dorothee Maas and Julia Quedzuweit
T +49 69 212 32828 / 73243, F +49 69 212 30703, presse.angewandte-kunst [at] stadt-frankfurt.de
