Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Friday 18th September 2009
13:00 – 16:30

Fashion in Film’s Inga Fraser presented a new take on some of the themes we explored in our first festival Between Stigma and Enigma in 2006. Showcasing a diverse range of films from leading 20th century filmmakers and artists, this collection of films looked into the relationship between fashion and art, beginning with the Surrealist scrutiny of inanimate objects. Through various modes of display and play, this programme sees clothes, shoes, stockings, hats and mannequins spin off into abstraction, assuming new shapes and meanings. Animated through film, the fashion objects rebel against their mundane usage, and with this rejection of their function as fashion objects, they take on the qualities of art objects.

Speakers: Designers Viktor & Rolf, Hussein Chalayan, Walter Van Beirendonck, Christophe Coppens, Naomi Filmer and Anna-Nicole Ziesche will discuss pieces they’ve made specially for the museum’s forthcoming exhibition; US artist Nick Cave will give a dance performance; guest curators José Teunissen and Judith Clark; writer Han Nefkens; Premsela’s Dingeman Kuilman; brand consultant and semiotics instructor Luca Marchetti; art historian Marga van Mechelen; fashion instructor Karin Schacknat; and scholar Barbara Vinken.

This international symposium marked the opening of the The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusions at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, in collaboration with Premsela - Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion, D’Acapo, and the ArtEZ Modelectoraat. The Art of Fashion explores the creative relationship between clothing and art.

Kinetic Art and Paco Rabanne, 1967. Dir. Henri Champetier. Courtesy Gaumont Pathe

Mannequins for Sale, 1938. Courtesy Gaumont Pathe

Emak Bakia
France, 1926. Dir. Man Ray.

Ghosts Before Breakfast (Vormittagsspuck)
Germany, 1928. Dir. Hans Richter.

Mannequins for Sale (Mannequins à Vendre)
France, 1938.

Kinetic Art and Paco Rabanne (L’Art Cinétique et Paco Rabanne)
France, 1967. Dir. Henri Champetier.

59 Positions
Austria, 1992. Dir. Erwin Wurm.

One and One Now Make Two While Before It Only Made One
(Un et un a present ca fait deux avant ca ne faisait qu'un)
Brussels, 2000. Dir. Marie-France and Patricia Martin.