THE SOCIAL NETWORK

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Hundreds upon hundreds of journalists lined up outside the Walter Reade Theater in New York early Friday morning for the very first official screening of David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” Opening the New York Film Festival, the film - which details the very dramatic origins of Facebook - has already won raves and significant Oscar buzz through numerous private screenings over the past few weeks. But this screening marked the first time its filmmaker, screenwriter and cast came along to share their thoughts on “The Social Network.”

Aaron Sorkin on his general disdain for the internet, how he overcame it to make this film, and the universe themes of “The Social Network”:

“My feelings about the internet are actually irrelevant to anyone’s enjoyment of the movie. But what made me overcome it was that I didn’t think it was a movie about Facebook. I thought it was a movie that has themes as old as storytelling itself… Themes of friendship and loyalty, and of class and jealously and power. These things that Shakespeare would write about it, or Paddy Chayefsky would write about.  But luckily for me, none of those people were available so I got to write about it.”

David Fincher on what drew him to the project:

“I think people thought we were making the sequel to “The Net,” or that we were trying to do some sort of fad hawking. But, you know, I really didn’t know anything about the origins of Facebook. I just had a dry read of a script that had a bunch of people in it I felt I knew, and knew intimately. I could relate to them, and I could empathize with them.”

by Peter Knegt (September 24, 2010)

House of Karl

How much longer can Chanel’s indefatigable designer keep going?

Karl Lagerfeld presented his 55rd ready-to-wear collection for Chanel in March in typical over-the-top fashion. Staged at the mammoth Grand Palais in Paris, the show featured models dressed in fur-trimmed tweed minidresses and fur moon boots, sloshing around a giant iceberg that Chanel had shipped in from Sweden. The fashion press howled that Chanel was tone-deaf when it came to the environment—especially after Lagerfeld told reporters backstage that global warming might be “nonsense.” If the controversy was a planned exercise in media hype, it worked.

But some wondered if the stunt wasn’t also Lagerfeld’s commentary on the instability at Chanel, one of fashion’s oldest and most venerable houses. The obvious issue is who will helm the brand once Lagerfeld ends his long reign (now at 27 years and counting)? The unseen: industry talk that Lagerfeld and Maureen Chiquet, Chanel’s American-born global CEO since 2007 and former head of Banana Republic, are at odds. Rumors of Lagerfeld’s looming departure even aired during the March show.

The Australian edition of Grazia magazine posted on its Web site, “Karl Lagerfeld’s tenure at Chanel is coming to an end.” Chanel immediately denied it. “Karl Lagerfeld has a long-term contract with the company,” an official statement said. “Replacing him is not an issue.”

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HAUNTED

CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY

PHOTOGRAPHY / VIDEO / PERFORMANCE

March 26–September 6, 2010

Whether aural or visual, moving or still, mediums like photography, film, video and phonograph and tape recordings provide us with an almost magical ability to experience an ephemeral performance, to see and hear a long-dead person as if alive. Yet all recordings are also ghostly reminders of lost time and the elusiveness of memory. Reproductive mediums have transformed our conception of the past and given us unique access to history; they have also given us a new, troubling distance from it.

Much of contemporary photography and video seems haunted by the past, by ghostly apparitions that are reanimated in reproductive media, as well as in live performance and the virtual world. By using dated, passé, or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matter, and technologies, this art embodies a melancholic longing for an otherwise irrecuperable past. Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance examines myriad ways photographic imagery is incorporated into recent practice and in the process underscores the unique power of reproductive media while documenting a widespread contemporary obsession, both collective and individual, with accessing the past. The works included in the exhibition range from individual photographs and photographic series, to sculptures and paintings that incorporate photographic elements, and to videos, both on monitors and projected, as well as film, performance, and site-specific installations. Drawn primarily from the Guggenheim Museum collection, Haunted features recent acquisitions, many of which are exhibited by the museum for the first time. Included in the show is work by such artists as Marina Abramović, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Zoe Leonard, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and Andy Warhol. A significant part of the exhibition is dedicated to work created since 2001 by younger artists. This exhibition is curated by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography, and Nat Trotman, Associate Curator.

This exhibition is made possible by the International Director’s Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Additional support is provided by grants from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation. The Leadership Committee for Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance is gratefully acknowledged.