Building on the success of the Projector Art Fair in Rotterdam, Trajector takes the core of the concept on the road for 2010.The Taut programme will comprise an exhibition, panel discussions, lectures and other events that will take place against the backdrop of the Trajector Art Fair at Hotel Bloom! Brussels in from 23 to 25 April 2010.

For other programme details of the Trajector Art Fair, please click here...
Details of the artists and creatives exhibiting in the exhibition are located here...

Details of the discussion/talk programme are detailed on this page, below. They will be updated and additional information added as soon as it is confirmed. Seating capacity for the presentations and panel discussions is limited.

Although not essential, it is strongly advised that you reserve a seat. To reserve a seat please contact us via info@trajectorartfair.org giving us:

- your name/s
- the name of the event for which you wish to reserve

Please note: We will hold your place only until 5 minutes before the event starts. Thus, late arrival may mean that you will not have access.

The Bauschian Moment - Presentation & Panel Discussion

Saturday 24 April –commences 14:00

Neo-Expressionism is a bit of an anomaly. For one thing, in mulling over the history of Neo-Expressionism in the visual arts, strongly associated with German painting, what is interesting is to see that the emergence of artists like Kiefer actually post-dates the groundbreaking work of the late Pina Bausch, an artist from another discipline associated with the term.

Bausch, together with others after her and predating her, offered a kind of gesamkunstwerk in which the living action of the body – its gestures and intrinsic choreography- coexist with other visual elements and, perhaps most importantly strong mise-en-scène, to offer some form of artistic communication that is characterized by an internal mechanism engaging the emotional and sensory. It almost stands in opposition to the drives of ‘the documentary’ whilst occasionally appropriating its methods. This tendency which one might (simply for the sake of no other readily available term existing) call ‘the Bauschian moment’ can be traced through almost every contemporary artistic discipline. Indeed, it has gained an ever more tangible presence in fashion and fashion media since the 1980’s, from the photography of advertising campaigns and fashion shoots to the presentation of collections on catwalks.

The aim of this discussion is to examine the elements of what might be termed ‘the Bauschian moment’ (even if only to refute its existence), its nature, its traditions and its motivations and perhaps to even contemplate ways in which it is currently reformulated in fashion and art. What, if anything, does this signify about similarities in contemporary fashion and art practice or the about the aspirations of the contemporary societies and cultures in which it is located?

It will be accompanied by a presentation of relevant works and archival materials such as those from the archive of Belgian choreographer Marc Vanrunxt.

Panelists include:

Adrian Rifkin – Art historian and cultural theorist
Patricia Canino – (Fashion) Photographer, filmmaker and theorist

Shades of Black- Presentation & Panel Discussion

Saturday 24 April –commences 16:00

Coinciding with the recent opening of a substantial exhibition at the Fashion Museum in Antwerp that examines the use of black in fashion, Taut has collaborated with the MoMu to present a programme that extends the discourses explored at the MoMu in that exhibition.

The event will open with a presentation by the cultural historian Emmanuelle Dirix (also a contributor to the MoMu project) who is well known for her work examining relationship between fashion’s representations of women and the cultural narratives arising around them, perhaps most notably for examining the apocryphal – yet ubiquitous- folklore surrounding Chanel’s invention of ‘the little black dress’.

Her presentation will segue into a panel discussion that will take ‘the little black dress’ and the use of black in women’s fashion to examine some of the other narratives, ideas and social mores arising from them. They will they consider how designers have channelled the use of black to specific ends and, indeed, what such statements might reveal about contemporaneous society. By considering the fashion creative’s experience, it is also hoped that some insight will be shed into examining how those currently working in presenting images of fashion within current media need to react to the canon of black as colour; what scope for creativity remains? And they will also look at how artists or underground movements have reacted, whether by resistance or appropriation, to the dominant discourses linking women’s recent and contemporary fashion to the colour black.

Panellists include:

Emmanuelle Dirix: cultural and fashion historian.
Laurent Dombrowicz: fashion creative at large & Fashion Director for So Chic Magazine; Contributing Fashion Editor for Vogue Korea
Vanalyne Green: American artist and one of generation associated with a consciously feminist practice
Brigitte Stepputtis: Head of Couture, Vivienne Westwood

One Big Family - Presentation & Panel Discussion

Sunday 25 April - commences 14:00

The programme will open with presentations on the collaborations that took place between artists and fashion designers in the first half of the twentieth century. The central presentation will be by the fashion historian Nele Bernheim who will present key findings, in the form of a dialogue, from her research into the Belgian fashion house Norine and its intensive involvement and collaboration with leading avant-garde artists in the mid-twentieth century.

From both of these and, indeed, from a range of other sources, there is a strong body of evidence that art and fashion were closely linked during the mid twentieth century; the main race for Modernism. Similarly, if we look around us today, the world once again seems to be full of examples of fashion and art in collaboration: artists produce works sponsored by fashion brands or in collaboration with designers; brands set up collections of contemporary art. Even within fashion or artworks themselves there is much shared ground. Yet, if we consider the immediately preceding decades of the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, there are far fewer examples of such proximity or collaboration.

Given such phenomena, what can we deduce from the mid twentieth century and the present’s proximity of art and fashion? What might it tell us about the contemporaneous societies? What light can be shed on how the artistic motivations or the aspirations of fashion practitioners in these respective periods explain the actuality of collaboration and proximity?

Panelists include:

Nele Bernheim – Fashion Historian, specialist of Norine’s art collaborations.
Sadie Murdoch – Artist and academic; specialist researcher in Modernism
Brian Fillis – Television and film writer; self-confessed fan of post-War modernism