The new exhibition mining fashion’s relationship with queers

At this time, the Internet has created a lens to analyze everything without a breath. In the past few years, the hot economy has given rise to a wave of new cultural critics. Think tanks, podcasts, and video essays that produce up-to-date commentary on visual trends and pop culture events. from Bread tubeto the The future of TikTokfor girls Nimphet students, young people blur the distinction between academics and entertainment, literature and content, and use such things as local entertainment. As a result, criticism as we know it is decentralised, suffused by individuals with access to social media.

That’s something Elise Be Olson, founder of Chin-Stroke. Wallet He knows very well. “I think culture should always be open and accessible to those who want it. “But I’m always pushing to reorient media and print to the written word,” she says. At the age of 13, she became the editor-in-chief of Youth Culture magazine. The latestAnd she is now an associate publisher Viscosity Journal, which positions itself as a magazine for “reading fashion people”. A provocative tagline, perhaps, but By Olsen doesn’t see this as intellectual snobbery. “Honestly, most people don’t read. It’s about quality. Writing and publishing takes time and takes all of your attention. I believe in this generosity. Her latest project, the International Fashion Research Library, provides a physical space in Oslo to further explore fashion as a cultural art.

“Fashion rarely gets the in-depth study it deserves. It requires intellectual enterprise, new narratives, and a healthy collective environment to engage with fashion’s actual production and positioning,” she says. A room was passed down to Olson for her mentor — the cultural theorist Steven Marc Klein — when he died last year.And while it won’t officially open until October, the library is now launching its first satellite exhibit. Kueng fashionHeld in collaboration with the Norwegian National Museum. “Fashion takes center stage when it comes to negotiating dynamic gender roles, and this opens up an important conversation about inclusion and exclusion. What’s in and what’s out? Who’s in and who’s out? The history of fashion is prone to the marginalized becoming insiders. Most of our points of reference are archaeological. They are not ‘non-existent’ – and many institutions are built by these same marginalized people, based on a particular set of frustrations or omissions.

Accompanied by an extensive reading list, the project featured a one-off print, film, outdoor exhibition and reading space at Printed Matter in New York. In a queer age, works that examine the relationship between fashion and the ‘cool’ are not meant to be stigmatizing. In the archives, “outside artists and key figures from the young and progressive international underground scene are invited to explore notions of queerness through fashion, if not fashion silliness. One such artist is Lengua – who came as a member Shane Oliver’s Anonymous Club – They use film and photography to imagine their own relationship with queerness through their upbringing in the Canary Islands and their journey through sexuality on Mother Earth. “The word ‘queer’ has been obliterated, it’s like we’re chewing on nothing,” they say. “So we wanted to use fashion as a vehicle to carry the film’s narrative and ‘show’ everyone from any time or place; each character has a monopoly on their own identity.”

It’s easy to theorize queerness, but this kind of work acknowledges that even a kiss—or the way one holds a gaze—is a form of composite archive. “Choreography is key to the language of the film, it’s the ability to remember and not forget how to look at each other and look closely,” says Lengua. These words are all the more poignant knowing that the project began with a mass shooting in one of Oslo’s popular gay bars, 50 years after homosexuality was condemned in the country. “It shows that the celebrations can never be divorced from their critical motivations,” added Olson, who is always wary of the pitfalls of queer culture when it operates outside of national institutions. “Everything comes down to money, which isn’t inherently bad, it just depends on what you do with it. Our agreement with the National Museum reaffirms the library’s mission to prevent critical involvement in fashion and build a free resource that is open and accessible to everyone,” she said. and insiders”.