17 posts tagged "Michael Stipe"
Fashion And Art Converge At The Whitney
It had all the fixings of a standard fashion show—front-row fixtures like Michael Stipe and Jen Brill, makeup by James Kaliardos for MAC, hair by Bumble and Bumble, and in-demand models from agencies like IMG and Ford, but K8 Hardy‘s Untitled Runway Show at the Whitney Museum on Sunday was anything but typical. The multimedia performance artist, known best for her cult zine FashionFashion, put together a collection of over 30 looks as part of her exhibition for the 2012 Biennial. For Hardy, the presentation was a way of creating a dialogue about commercialism and the way fashion affects society’s views on women rather than a vehicle for showing off her design chops.
The crowd of art enthusiasts waited patiently for about half an hour before the first model stepped out onto the wood and steel runway set, installed for the occasion by fellow Biennial artist Oscar Tuazon. Walking to amped-up reggaeton beats mixed up with Neutrogena radio ads and high-pitched nail art tutorials that had some audience members covering their ears, each model affected her own signature strut based on Hardy’s instructions. “I used to love the shows where models would dance down the runway,” Hardy told Style.com after the show. Some shuffled slowly with a moribund limp, others did ballet-like pliés and leaps, and one girl even staged a convincing runway stumble and tumble. Each catwalker wore teased-to-the-max wigs and face paint that resembled another spoof on the now-famous Tanning Mom.
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Two Great Fashion Tastes That Taste Great Together
Every so often, life gives you occasion to wonder: Where do those front-row regulars go in the six months between fashion seasons? In plenty of cases, it’s only back to the manse for intensive exfoliation and wardrobe realignment, but a select few also hold day jobs in the interim. Two of the latter type are Kirsten Dunst (friend of Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, and regular showgoer) and Michael Stipe (a frequent attendee of the menswear shows), who have teamed up for a new video. “We All Go Back to Where We Belong” is the last single from Stipe’s R.E.M., which announced in September that it is disbanding after three decades; the song will appear on the forthcoming greatest-hits compilation Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage. Dominic DeJoseph directed the accompanying short, which is actually one of two versions of the “We All Go Back to Where We Belong” video. The other features a guy we haven’t seen front-row: poet John Giorno.
AWE Strikes London
Art week kicked into gear last night at London’s Cuckoo Club, where the likes of Courtney Love, Michael Stipe, Tali Lennox, and Daisy Lowe gathered for the “Rave in a Cave”-themed party fêting the debut issue of AWE (Art Wednesday Editorial) magazine. “I’m not hungover, luckily, but more than a few people might be—it was pretty wild,” co-founder and editor Max Bergius says of last night’s festivities.
Today, Bergius was still punchdrunk from the excitement of seeing his magazine finally come to fruition (his first glimpse of the final copy was at 3 p.m. yesterday). Roughly a year ago, Bergius started his site, ArtWednesday.com, and then decided to do the unconventional and turn it into a magazine with his friend James Penfold. “It seemed like a physical version was important because Web content is so disposable,” he explains. So, they enlisted a team that included Paola Kudacki, Maryna Linchuk, Annabel Tollman, Todd Selby, and William Eadon to work on their first issue of their biannual arts and culture mag.
“The most challenging thing is stepping up to the mark and being able to produce something that is original,” Bergius says. “There are so many incredible magazines out there, but many of them have similar themes and the same people going through them.” In the case of AWE magazine, the photographers and writers were given free rein to do whatever they wanted, with Bergius and Penfold on the sidelines, simply “guiding them in a way that allowed their creativity to come out.” In the case of some of the contributors, they were asked to step outside their comfort zone and do a job they had almost never done before. There’s an eclectic, innovative assortment of stories, including Selby’s shoot with Robert Wilson, unpublished photos by Alvin Baltrop, and Lily Cole’s feature on sustainability. If those topics feel too PG for your liking, Bergius says, “What’s the word? Well, Paola’s shoot with Maryna is a bit dirty; it’s adult art.”
Istanbul’s “Sense Of Opportunity And Possibility” Draws A Crowd—Including Dunst, Swinton, Ackermann, And Love
Istanbul’s population unofficially tops 16 million. This past weekend, it felt like every single one of them owned a car—or at least was driving one. Guests at Istancool—the second Istanbul International Festival of Culture, to give it its full title—became intimately acquainted with the world through a minibus window as they negotiated the route from the Edition Hotel (seven stars! and a Snow Room!) to the various venues around the city. It was a useful education. Istanbul sits at a huge crossroads, geographically (obviously) but also conceptually. Michael Stipe, there for a presentation of his Collapse Into Now film project, went so far as to compare Istanbul’s “sense of opportunity and possibility” to the feeling New York has always given him. The project—a work in progress—has been corralling filmmakers to produce short pieces to accompany songs on the latest R.E.M. album. Liberatum offered a first view of a fast, furious, and funny film James Franco has made for “That Someone Is You,” which was the kind of coup that is critical to the festival’s success, according to Jefferson Hack, who hosted the Stipe event. (His magazine Another was the festival’s media collaborator.)
A different kind of coup was the presence of Kirsten Dunst and Tilda Swinton, both just off the plane from Cannes, where Dunst won Best Actress for Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. At 29, she has already spent more than two decades onscreen and experienced as many character-building extremes as show business can hurl at a young woman. (Lest we forgot, the heavily accented English translator of her Turkish introduction sonorously intoned, “We know her as the lover of the spiderman.”) Nevertheless, Dunst was gratifyingly, girlishly floored by her Cannes award. And she looked appropriately radiant in her Chanel couture at Istancool’s gala dinner. Continue Reading “Istanbul’s “Sense Of Opportunity And Possibility” Draws A Crowd—Including Dunst, Swinton, Ackermann, And Love” »
Tara Subkoff Pledges Allegiance…To Downtown New York
Would you like to have lunch on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange? Perhaps a late-night repast at Macy’s, the night before Christmas? If so, then the vibe at last night’s opening of Co-Op at the Rivington Hotel on the Lower East Side would have greatly appealed to you. Thronging is, perhaps, too gentle a word. A clublike atmosphere prevailed as Tara Subkoff, who designed the uniforms for the restaurant’s staff, hosted a dinner for a couple dozen pals, among them Chloë Sevigny, Michael Stipe, and Debbie Harry (left, whose Polaroid portrait also hangs, with those of other downtown notables, on the wall). For Subkoff, the meal may possibly mark a homecoming: As she held court with her boyfriend, King’s Speech director Tom Hooper, Subkoff revealed that they’ve been apartment-shopping in the city, and are planning to decamp from L.A. as soon as they’ve found a place. “That’s part of the reason I liked the idea of doing the uniforms,” Subkoff said. “It’s a way of showing my allegiance to downtown New York, and the Lower East Side in particular. I love it here. And I love the idea that this place is kind of amping up the glamour of the neighborhood.” The glamour quotient was certainly high last night: Besides Subkoff, fashion faces spotted amid the revelry included designers Yigal Azrouël, Katie Gallagher, and Johan Lindeberg.