Does self expression flourish under pressure? Is creativity at its most acute in times of social, political and financial crises? More than anything, do the Arts provide hope during periods of extreme difficulty?
The Great Depression in the 1930’s saw Hollywood enter its Golden Age, a period many still describe as the Imperial Era of cinema. On the eve of WWII in 1939 MGM created Gone with the Wind, still one of the most successful films of all time. The Wizard of Oz, released the same year, became one of the most famous moving pictures ever made and Judy Garland’s rendition of Over the Rainbow has been voted the greatest American movie song of all time by the American Film Institute. Extravagant colour and elaborate sets delighted millions; timeless in their invention and splendour while the music, choreography and elaborate costumes of this period all became instant classics, both on celluloid and stage.
So now, while the financial world alleges we are once again in the midst of a grave depression, could Art once more succeed and exceed beyond all limits, providing a platform where all channels of creativity might flourish, stimulate and inspire?
With this in mind, Lingering Whispers has been born. An exhibition comprising of 40 international artists hunting for alternative ways of expression during this crisis. Art and Fashion will merge into one, both stage and catwalk, conscious and subconscious combined where imagination will be celebrated and the pigeonholed eliminated. Contemporary artists, poets, performers, fashion designers and photographers will unite in sharing their unspoken vanities, intoxicating fantasies, illusions, longings, dreams and desires. Lingering Whispers is about experiencing, not inert viewing. Art as a stage rather than four blank gallery walls. A glamorous, exquisite alternative to darkness and gloom.
Curated by Predrag Pajdic and produced by Virginie Puertolas-Syn with: Dom Agius, Errikos Andreu, Barney Ashton, Joachim Baldauf, Sang Bleu, Stefania Bonatelli, Wren Britton, Carolyn Cowan, Fran Dileo, Alexandra Eldridge, Devin Elijah, Manuel Estevez, Roberto Foddai, Al Giga, Frances Goodman, Christophe Haleb, Katharina Hesse, Daniel Holfeld, Kobi Israel, Christina Kruse, Pascale Lafay, Scooter Laforge, Emiliano Lazzarotto, Mark Mander, Tupac Martir, Katarina Mootich, Michal Ohana-Cole, Maflohé Passedouet, Petra Reimann, Ricci/Forte, Pato Rivero, Yvonne De Rosa, Mauro Santucci, Iris Schieferstein, Erick Soler, Tapio Snellman, Wolfgang Stiller, Christopher Stribley, Lee Wagstaff & Cyrille Weiner.
07 May – 06 June 2010
Open daily from 11 – 7 pm, weekends 11 – 8 pm, free entrance!
Opening 06 May 2010 from 6 – 9 pm
Press preview 06 May 2010 from 3 – 5 pm
Closing Party 06 June from 3 – 8 pm
Crypt, St Pancras Church
Euston Road
London NW1 2BA
United Kingdom
For further information and press images,
please contact Predrag Pajdic on
+44 77 344 340 66 or p.pajdic@gmail.com
Opening Night on the 6th of May 2010 from 6 pm
With live performances by Clementine The Living Fashion Doll & ricci/forte
And the music by Stéphane Richez
Closing Party on the 6th of June 2010 from 3 pm
With live performances by
Hrafnhildur Benediktsdóttir, Christopher Matthews, Nathália Mello
Barney Ashton & Clementine The Living Fashion Doll
No room for less than the best in dress and style. Be superior, super smart, hot, haute and handsome. Black tails, white tie, kilts or a dress to die for with pearls and hats to match… Lingering Whispers’ dress code is chic, sleek, no compromise!
Meet the Lingering Whispers artists
Friday 07 May 2010
From 3 – 5 pm
All Saturdays throughout the exhibition
[08, 15, 22, 29 May]
From 3 – 4 pm
Guided Exhibition Tours
With Predrag Pajdic
And a glass of Champagne
Every Sunday during the exhibition period
[09, 16, 23, 30 May and 01 June 2010]
From 3 – 5 pm
High Tea Theatre
With Clementine The Living Fashion Doll, Barney Ashton
And sumptuous teas featuring couture macaroons from La Rose Doree
Sunday 23 May 4 pm
Between the Lines [Fortune-telling interactive performance]
by
Maflohé Passedouet
co-production with INREV Laboratory of Paris
8 University/Cédric Plessiet
Free admission to all events!
224 pages
300 x 230 mm
On satin 130 g paper
Edited by Predrag Pajdic
With contributions by Sarah Bailey, J. L. Nash
Virginie Puertolas-Syn & Jeanne-Salomé Rochat
Designed by Samanta M. Vega & Sigurd Mannsåker @ Standard & Large
Published by The Pandorian
ISBN 978-0-9553309-1-9
Printed in Italy by E-Graphic S.p.a.
2000 copies
Only £ 25
BUY IT NOW ON LINE
(only the UK and the European Union)
40 international artists, more then 100 exquisite artworks, 16 interviews, essays…
The Intense Murmur of Soft Voices Left Behind
This exhibition stands, an artistic platform where art and fashion debate the merits of creation with the viewer. It dares to speak of over 40 international talents who explore the borderland where fashion is art; deepest fears turn into innermost whims, glam replaces gloom and depression metamorphoses into seduction. New perspectives shout of every stereotype and each reaction born of alternative visions.
Lingering Whispers confronts the usual rules of display of contemporary art. Far from the white cubed dogma, the Crypt of the Church of Saint Pancras, where the whisper of the memories of 550 souls rest, blends art with the tombstones, relics, and mysterious hallways. Once ritual spaces offered a chance to worship the divine but today this burial chamber celebrates the human. One year ago, in Waterloo underground station, Kevin Spacey’s Tunnel 228 project knitted theatre and art. Now, in this catacomb, art and fashion merge. Where else than in vibrant and daring London, under the serene protection of the Caryatids, could it have taken place?
The curator, Predrag Pajdic leads, guides, and inspires. His vision has set the path. His passion has been a catalyst for their creation. His energy mesmerizes and in the true sense of cūrā(re), he cares and attends to the needs of creatives and creations. The result is an amazing alchemy, an enchanting journey, a poetic encounter.
This exhibition exists because of the commitment of those who contributed, the vital support of patrons and the outstanding force of the artists and talents who decide it can be. To all of them. Thank You.
Now, let go and surrender!
Text: © Virginie Puertolas-Syn, Producer
by Sarah Bailey
On the backdrop of the stage, an erotic film of a beautiful model with a snake writhing across her breast is projected. Enormous predatory robot cameras prowl the catwalk filming the parade of models that stalk by in their evermore exquisite, otherworldly ensembles, balanced on vertiginous ‘armadillo shoes’ like space-age chopines. Occasionally the cameras turn their lenses on the massed elite of the fashion community in the audience and at intervals they glimpse their own image projected about the space, as the phantasmagoric spectacular unfolds.
The post-show dissection of Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2010 collection Plato’s Atlantis (amongst other things, the first fashion show to ever be simultaneously streamed live) in the back of the Harper’s Bazaar silver people carrier is livelier than usual. The chatter of our little group strives to get at the nub at what we have just witnessed – an extraordinary immersive sensory experience – as confronting as it was exhilarating. “If that had been in a gallery like The Tate or The Met,” someone says, “People would see that as more exciting and innovative than any contemporary art exhibition.”
So often in my travels as a fashion editor, I find myself encountering spectacles, imagery and performances that hover at the interface of art and fashion. Collaborations and cross-disciplinary borrowings couldn’t be hotter. From the Chapman Brothers’ recent fashion editorial debut in the pages of my magazine Harper’s Bazaar; to the New Bond Street Louis Vuitton Maison, which when it opens later this month will be graced with an exhibition in its windows by artist Michael Landy (who famously destroyed all his possessions in his 2001 piece Break Down).
Of course, art and fashion have had a long and public love affair. From Elsa Schiaparelli’s famous dalliances with Dadaists and Surrealists (her 1937 ‘Lobster dress’ with a crimson crustacean painted by Salvador Dali was modelled by Wallis Simpson in a sitting with Cecil Beaton); to Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Mondrian shift dresses which captured the essence of Pop. Another particularly sublime collaboration by the couturier with the artists Claude and Francois Xavier Lalanne in 1967, saw the sculptors cast a sensual bronze breastplate for the bodice of a gown.
In Lingering Whispers – a show very much located in the now – curator Predrag Pajdic digs below the art world love-ins and lucrative patronage deals of the luxury fashion labels and assembles a collection of work that explicitly explores and occupies the space at the borderline of art and fashion. This is a place where a balletic, levitating “Cinderella shoe” by Katarina Mootich dancing through the cavernous blackness of the gallery is as revelatory as it is beautiful; and where an intimate performance by Italian duo ricci/forte, set in a bathroom challenges its audience with the pain of impossible dreams and unrequited love.
Thinking again of McQueen – as one cannot help doing in the weeks after his death – this is territory the designer well understood. According to his friend, the fashion writer Susannah Frankel, who interviewed him many times, “Lee was an autobiographical designer – maybe the most autobiographical designer in history – and so the clothes and the way they were presented always reflected his psychological state at that precise point in time. I think that’s a very courageous way of working.”
There’s soul bearing and courage aplenty in the works presented in Lingering Whispers – a conjuring of beauty and opulence against whatever odds. Pajdic explains that he was inspired to create the show after researching how the 1930s big Hollywood film was born out of the Great Depression, when the studios would invite the celebrated couturiers of the day to costume the movies with the most sumptuous creations and set designers were tasked with creating glamour to the max. As a metaphor for our own gloomy times, Pajdic chose the sombrely magnificent setting of the Crypt at St Pancras to stage the exhibition, “then I could completely transform it into a dream of the most beautiful splendour and glamour that there is.”
Significantly, Pajdic does not regard fashion as a medium or pursuit that is the preserve of the elite. “I know so many people who cannot afford very expensive things, but they can dress in the most spectacular and beautiful way. It is something that you have to learn and experiment and practice and play and for me that is art…”
“With the exhibition I want to go beyond the stereotypes of fashion – that it is just for the beautiful bodies, for the beautiful people, who can afford the beautiful clothing. It is much more than that…”
And so it is. For all the glittering visual opulence on display, Lingering Whispers offers a breadth of nuanced, thoughtful and provocative work, from Dom Agius’ A New Royal Family, A Wild Nobility, tender portraits of venerable English eccentricity; to French photographer Cyrille Weiner’s epic series 2 Fresh 2 Die, in collaboration with choreographer Christophe Haleb, which depicts some wild and mysterious theatrical Saturnalia. New York-based German artist Christina Kruse, who has quietly pursued photographic image-making and assemblage, alongside her career as a model, makes her British artistic debut with her icily beautiful – if somewhat sinister – photographic pieces in which she casts herself as the anonymous female figure in the frame and probes the catholic church’s approach to sexual morality and female solitude.
Many of the photographic practitioners shown in Lingering Whispers have developed their practice and aesthetic in the European avant-garde publications such as Sang Bleu, Slurp and AnOther magazines Pajdic defines as “brave enough to employ photographers who are kind of on the borders, kind of in-between.”
Gender and sexual identity are persistent themes throughout the show the adorned and eroticised male body is more present here than in most surveys of contemporary fashion. “Women were always considered the more beautiful sex, but I believe something is happening in the fashion world,” says Pajdic, “that men are becoming really strong and flamboyant too, and maybe this exhibition is about redefining certain things.”
Perhaps the most radical of Pajdic’s curatorial choices is his decision to bring performance and tableaux vivant into the mix. “Fashion is moveable, it is something to wear,” he explains simply. And as someone who has endured too many academic costume shows, when clothes are hung in vitrines as if frozen – lost of their context, their sensuality and their relationship to the body – I relish the prospect of models, performers, artists and fashion designers mingling with the visitors to Lingering Whispers in all their exotically-attired glory.
“For me art is something you simply respond to,” says Pajdic, “you don’t have to love it or hate it but it moves you, you feel something.” And fashion as McQueen himself said, “is always about a moment in time.”
Text: © Sarah Bailey, 2010
Sarah Bailey is the Deputy Editor of the British Harper’s Bazaar
by J. L. Nash
Look, out of the shadows deep into the wells
I created in your eyes when they were empty
Never to speak of the smell of
Greed, or hope that
Echoes of bright crocuses used in the smelting
Rituals of all that celluloid
I have forgotten where it went
Now, left behind are traces of cotton
Ginger hair in a brush and an empty bottle
Wanting this posy i stepped back into the shadow
How your body reeked with my story
Instant gratification in my own existence
Slid down through the fastening of my
Pants and all that was left, was a word
Etched
Run
Text: © J. L. Nash, 2010
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