Hedi Slimane presents at MUSAC his project about Benicàssim

MUSAC presents on May 17 the project that the artist Hedi Slimane has produced ex professo for the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. Through a publication and an installation created expressly for this occasion, Slimane continues his personal exploration of youth aesthetics in relation to music as a factor of construction and transformation of identity.

HEDI SLIMANE_MUSAC

In May 2007 Hedi Slimane was invited by MUSAC and Maraworld—the company that promotes the International Festival of Benicàssim—to portray with his camera the 14th edition of the major musical event. For the four days of July during which thousands of young people from all over the world concentrated on the shores of the Mediterranean to attend their annual date with music, Slimane unceasingly pursued with this camera those beats so characteristic of his own aesthetic. Now, almost a year later, the reflection of that work is presented in a project that, through an installation in Leon’s museum space, and a publication, puts the French creator’s aesthetic universe into perspective.

As regards the installation, Slimane once again exhibits the connections between musical celebration and fans, and, definitively, the constructive reciprocity of both identities through the exchange promoted by live music. Thus, visitors to the exhibition will find a display of all the iconography intrinsic to a concert: an empty stage and the young members of the audience. The artist thus ultimately proposes an inversion of the habitual role of the spectator—or fan—as the visitor is allowed onto the stage to experience the rock star’s overwhelming sensation when before the masses who expectantly await the appearance of their idol, whom they venerate, and with whom they identify.

Undoubtedly, this is an installation that goes beyond photography and in which Slimane resituates the audience inside the action, as it is both an active and passive subject of a moment that is frozen.

Rock Diary: the publication

Rock Diary represents the printed part of the project conceived by Hedi Slimane for MUSAC. Designed by the artist himself, the book has been edited by MUSAC and published by JRP|Ringier. Its purpose is none other than to offer the possibility of approaching the French creator’s work of the last ten years. The publication consists of three books: the first one contains the images Slimane captured during his four day stay in Benicàssim in the summer of 2007, which focus on the communion that takes place between important celebrities of the music world—The Horrors, Amy Winehouse and The Klaxons—and their audiences and, in short, their fans. The second book is an overview of rock diary, which Slimane has been putting together for the past decade by way of artists such as Pete Doherty or the iconography constructed by live music and young spectators.

Finally, the third and last of them provides a platform for the opinions of Vince Aletti— eminent American music journalist and photography critic for The New Yorker—Alex Needham—a music journalist who has collaborated with Hedi Slimane to compose Rock Diary for V Magazine—Jon Savage—music journalist for The Observer— and Agustín Pérez Rubio—curator of this project and Chief Curator of MUSAC.

More infos:

www.musac.es

www.hedislimane.com

www.hedislimane.com/diary (Pictures taken at Benicàssim: 22/07/07 - 20/08/07)

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