FRIDAY LATE: The Postmodern Look
V&A PRESENTS FRIDAY LATE with MasterCard
THE POSTMODERN LOOK
Friday 28 October, 18.30–22.00
Please check back for further details. Timings and locations are subject to change.
This month’s Friday Late celebrates the V&A exhibition Postmodernism: Style & Subversion 1970-1990. Come dressed up in your 1980s finest to take part in free workshops, activities and discussions. See a gig by Maria & The Mirrors, watch a live drag performance by Joey Arias, take part in our mix tape amnesty, or simply pose for the cameras as the V&A goes all postmodern. As a wise woman once said, 'Don't just stand there, let's get to it. Strike a pose, there's nothing to it’
All events are free and places designated on a first come, first served basis, unless stated otherwise.
Filming and photography will be taking place at this event.
MUSIC & LIVE ART
Theo Void’s Tape Culture Corner
Grand Entrance
18.30–21.45
In a tribute to tapes and tape culture, Theo Void’s Tape Culture Corner fuses sounds, visuals and a creative workshop all centred on cassettes. Submit a tape from that special someone and listen to excerpts from a selection of these home-made compilations submitted by visitors.
See below for workshop details.
Maria and the Mirrors
Lecture Theatre
19.15–20.00
Catch Maria & the Mirrors, a band that NME has described as a fusion of ‘Throbbing Gristle and EN with the otherworldly electronica of Gang Gang Dance’ and whose vocals it likened to ‘sirens luring you to a cranium-squeezing demise’.
Joey Arias
Lecture Theatre
20.30–21.30
Don’t miss this rare chance to catch performance artist, cabaret singer and drag artiste Joey Arias as he performs live at the V&A, following recent sold out shows in his home city of New York. The performance will be followed by a Q&A. Joey is executor of the Klaus Nomi Estate, for whom a tribute is held in Berlin every year, and the documentary film The Nomi Song was released in 2004. Introduced by Vicky Broackes, V&A Theatre & Performance Department.
Polaroid Poses
Throughout the Museum
18.30–21.45
Strike a pose for our roaming Polaroid photographer and get a keepsake from the evening. This event is all about attitude and style so max up your look.
SHUNT curates
Serena Bobowski of SHUNT samples performance from London’s subversive underground art scene in this blend of the kitsch and the ironic. Catch a glimpse of artists Rita Says, Brian Lobel and Bettina Buck as they momentarily turn the V&A into a stage.
Streichelzoo by Bettina Buck
Ground Floor Galleries
19.00–21.00
Streichelzoo revisits a performance last undertaken by Buck in 1998 in a tactile exploration with the public, of social codes and forms of representation within and throughout the V&A.
Sometimes I Go Out by Myself by Brian Lobel
Room 50b
19.05; 19.30; 19.50; 20.15; 20.35
This piece is an homage to Amy Winehouse and her particular beauty. In his performance, Brian creates an image which is funny, unsettling, sexy and sad.
Against the Day by Rita Says
19:15–19:40; 19:55–20:20; 20:35–21.00
Café Toilets
Against the Day dramatises the distance between what you see and your actual self: ‘the right look will give one the strength to face the day’.
WORKSHOPS
Theo Void’s Tape Culture Corner
Grand Entrance
18.30–21.00
Right alongside the tape music sound system in the Grand Entrance, you are invited to grab a cassette, scribe your ultimate selection and decorate in the spirit of the celebration, creating your very own mix tape totem.
Louise Bloor Blind Smell Test
Poynter Room, Café
18.30–21.30 with prize draw at 21.00
Louise Bloor bespoke perfumer challenges visitors to a blind smell test. With six 1970s and 1980s iconic perfumes to choose from, see if you can guess which is which. The winner takes all in the prize draw at 21.00.
A Constantly Mutating Digital Collage Machine
Art Studio, Sackler Centre
Sessions at 18.45–19.15; 19.15–19.45; 20.30–21.00; 21.00–21.30
Roll up your sleeves and get creative with Postmodernism exhibition graphic designers A Practice For Everyday Life (APFEL) and create your own new wave graphics. With the title of this workshop stemming from a short essay on Graphic Design in the postmodern era by Jeffery Keedy (written in 1988), the group of designers promises to get visitors making.
POMO Definitions: Badge Making
Sackler Centre Reception
18.30–21.30 or while supplies last!
Are you deep or superficial, serious or playful? Do you prefer Dallas or Dynasty? Modern or Postmodern? Choose your badge and wear it with pride.
Jasleen Kaur Bodging
Tinker Space, Porter Gallery
18.30–21.45
Jasleen bodges existing cutlery and tools into new ones built for how we do things, not how we should be doing them. Her adapted tools and contraptions reference everyday habits rather than formal etiquette.
TALKS
Signs of a Struggle: Photography in the Wake of Postmodernism
Photography Gallery (Room 38a)
19.00–19.45
Join V&A Curator Marta Weiss for a special tour of the display ‘Signs of a Struggle: Photography in the Wake of Postmodernism’. Spanning the mid-1970s to the present day, this display includes work by some of the most influential artists associated with Postmodernism, such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, alongside more recent work by Anne Hardy, David Shrigley and Clare Strand.
Famous for 15 Minutes Talks Series
A series of curator- and student-led talks is offered throughout the night. Each talk lasts approximately 15 minutes. Please check below for timings and locations.
David Bowie: Pop Art
West Room, Room 76
Hear how Bowie made pop postmodern in the 1970s and discuss the impact of his style and music, with Kathryn Johnson, V&A Research Assistant.
18.45
Shoulder Pads
West Room, Room 76
Join V&A Curator Oriole Cullen and broaden your appreciation of one of the 80s most iconic fashion signatures.
19.00
Danny Weil’s Radio in a Bag
West Room, Room 76
Jana Scholze, V&A Curator of Furniture & Product Design discusses the style statement that this deconstructed radio made for the 1980s consumer.
19.15
Are we not men?
West Room, Room 76
Assistant Curator Dawn Hoskin considers androgyny, ‘otherness’ and contradiction within postmodern ‘pop music’.
19.30
Conceptual Jewellery
Jewellery Gallery, Room 93
Listen to Royal Collage of Art student Marilyn Zapf discuss the moment that jewellery freed itself from the decorative and went feral.
19.45
Club Kids
West Room, Room 76
Lauren Fried takes us on a late night tour of the world of performer Leigh Bowery, dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and the extravagant world of the Club Kids.
20.00
Retrofit My Eighties
West Room, Room 76
Born in 1986, Royal College of Art student Jonathan P. Watts is an 80s baby. His earliest memory? Being in the Great Yarmouth branch of The Sweater Shop in 1992. Retrofit My Eighties reminisces on memories of a decade he never knew.
20.15
Postmodernism After Video. Video After Postmodernism
West Room, Room 76
Artist Bill Balaskas investigates the relationship between postmodernism and video and its influence on today, through the genres of the home movie and the music video.
20.30
The Wild West
New Acquisition Gallery, Rooms 19a & 20a
Postmodernism was a western phenomenon? Royal College of Art student Priya Khanchandani investigates.
20.45
Snap Happy
Photography Gallery, Room 38a
Accompany student Freire Barnes on a journey through the Polaroid as an instant memento of a good night out, when posing for the camera was a serious past time.
FILMS
‘Equator’ by Amy Yoes
Norfolk House Music Room
18.30–21.00 with introduction at 20.00 (2 mins loop)
Reminiscent of early hand-tinted experimental movies or architectural blueprints, Equator is a film installation that examines the role of architecture the ever present backdrop against which we perform our increasingly fractured and decentered lives. Equator has a layered, collage aesthetic where sequences are cut away and added to, resulting in unexpected collisions and mismatched perspectives, and where multiple vanishing points play out over time. Amy Yoes discusses her installation at 20.00.
‘Because We Must’ by Charles Atlas
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre
19.00 (50 mins)
Based on an original stage production at Sadlers' Wells Theatre in London, Because We Must is an ironic provocative and irreverent look at the life and world of dancer and choreographer Michael Clark.
This film is Uncertificated. Please use viewer discretion.
Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York
No Age, New York by Nick Abrahams & Ana Cory-Wright
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre
20.00 (50 mins)
Here’s your opportunity to see this rough guide to the New York underground of the 1980s. The film mixes interviews with underground alumni Beth B, Nick Zedd, Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern and clips of their controversial, confrontational works. Junking standard documentary structure in favour of a scattershot fanzine-type approach that vividly captures the scene of the period No Age, New York fizzes with energy and attitude.
This film is Uncertificated. Please use viewer discretion.
Courtesy of LUX, London
Scratch Video: Tilt by George Barber & Blue Monday and War Machine by Duvet Brothers
Leighton Staircase, Room 108
18.30–21.30 (14 mins loop)
‘Scratch Video’ is a style of video splicing that derives from dance and music fashions of the 1980s. Its long history begins with the cubist collages of Picasso and Braque, the ‘ready-mades’ of Duchamp, and reaches beyond Andy Warhol to William S. Burroughs’s ‘cut-ups’. Whilst War Machine presents prime war zone Scratch with a re-interpretation of a TV ad that mixes images of warfare with Reagan’s voice and a picture of war victims, Blue Monday takes us on a scratch attack vision of Britain in crisis set to New Order’s neu-funk hit record. Similarly for Tilt George Barber employed an old video mixer found at Goldsmiths to layer pastel 2D shapes and other image-processing patterns over footage from American television shows and commercials.
Courtesy of LUX, London
FOOD & DRINK
CONTACTS
Theo Void’s Tape Culture Corner
@BrettBoothLDN
Maria and the Mirrors
www.myspace.com/mariamirrors
Joey Arias
joeyarias.com
Shunt
www.shunt.co.uk
Louise Bloor
www.louisebloor.com
A Practice for Everyday Life
www.apracticeforeverydaylife.com
Amy Yoes
www.amyyoes.com
Brian Lobel
www.blobelwaming.com
Rita Says
Email: psays10@yahoo.co.uk
Jasleen Kaur
http://jasleenkaur.info/home.html
LUX
www.lux.org.uk
Electronic Arts
www.eal.org
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Proclaim how postmodern you are with our So Postmodern T-Shirt. Say it loud and say it proud!
Buy nowEvent - Friday Late - Un-built
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