| Home |
| Subscribe |
| Advertise |
| Where To Find Lola |
Image: Design by Camilla Singh, Label Flashing, New Remote, April 2001
'Cause I'm Beautiful The New Remote Label Flashing Event with Milos Jankovic, Ger Levinus, Branislav Nikolic, Camilla Singh, Steini Torssonand Walter Willems at SKC Gallery in Belgrade Serbia April 23-28 2001 by Carmen Victor There's no need to be shy with your tighty whities anymore, underwear as outerwear is all the rage in Serbia. Six artists from Holland, Iceland, Serbia, and Canada, who go by the name New Remote, converged at SKC Gallery in Belgrade last April for an event called Label Flashing. The exhibition consisted of a fashion show with clothing made from men's Y-front briefs. Less than a year ago, an event like this could not have been possible due to the political unrest in Belgrade. But one of the New Remote artists, Milos Jankovic, designs the website for the Serbian army, so the group was able to receive permission to produce the exhibition. As it turned out, next door to the SKC Gallery were some working professional models who were willing to wear the clothes each artist had made for the show. Who could have anticipated that sexy models would be available? Fashions designed by Canadian Camilla Singh using only Y-fronts flaunted ball cleavage and exposed ass cracks via strategically excised windows. The soundtrack was Depeche Mode's Dream On, and a washing machine was installed, which the models paraded around before heading through the gallery space and out to the street. Reports came back saying the whole night was a smashing success. 
Image: Ger Levinus showing off a New Remote label,
The distinguishing feature about the clothes in Label Flashing was the attached super-size labels. In an interview by Serbia's TV Politika, you can see the New Remote artists are all wearing regular street clothes but with giant labels jutting out from the back of their T-shirt collars. While Label Flashing is an obvious critique of brand name slavery, these artists made their own labels perhaps with the vague hope their art/products might get absorbed in to mass consumerism. In fact, what New Remote is mainly interested in is critiquing all forms of mass media and consumerism by indulging in them. For instance, if invited to give an artist talk the group would likely send a video with instructions to "just press play." As they see it, the intensity of their work, and their subject, is all in the planning. The execution of the work is, by comparison, immediate. So it makes perfect sense that various forms of telecommunications often turn out to be their main materials for exhibition installations. This modus operandi definitely makes New Remote mobile and international. For a recent exhibition in Akureyri, Iceland they sent the gallery scripts via fax machines. They composed the scripts and the gallery executed incoming instructions on a daily basis. The final show was a screening of the fax-ordered film and constructed set. New Remote formed in Holland in 1999 with five members, but at times that number has swelled to twenty. The latest incarnation is Ger Levinus, Branislav Nikolic, Milos Jankovic, Camilla Singh, Steini Torsson, and Walter Willems. While the terrain New Remote explores is not that new, their execution is effective, and Label Flashing had a tinge of darkness, despite the glam, in how it projected the mental death that comes with the passive lure of consuming. Belgrade's war ragged setting only helped to fuel the impact. One could easily suggest the New Remote are eating their cake and then pitching it on the floor by presenting fashion and then calling it art. But for them, format is the message, and whatever happens was intended to happen. It is a "karmically" correct, fail-safe motto. 
|