In a century surrounded by screens, we are also a screen ourselves. Filmed by director Nadia Bedzhanova, this short film explores the relationship between body and narratives and at the same time gives a sneak peak into the Ab[Screenwear] SS17 collection. Poet Chris Campanioni is setting the pace of the film with his hybrid prose poem This body’s long & I’m still loading, in which he is tracing the origins of surveillance and pornography in virtual reality to our future everyday cohabitation with technology.
We screen, wear and screen. Without meaning to criticise, Campanioni’s poem re-evaluates how the experience of human intimacy has changed because of technology. Shot in nature, the opposite of the screen, the video has something pure and organic. Nadia Bedzhanova says, “It's a cinematographic approach to separate what everyone was looking at –just the pixels on the screen– with the neutral colour. Pale girls with transparent, fading skin, hair the colour of the sand, overcast skies, nature’s very own gradient. Also nature is the skin as well: the sky, the sand, the sea are covering the earth.”
The collaborating artists wanted to celebrate the union of the body and the device: “Surfing the ocean and surfing the internet are very similar in a way. Same deep focus and flow. We love how we came to Breezy Point, one of the favourite surf spots in a close proximity to NY, which was a total coincidence, but in retrospect nothing is random.” Girls swaying together in a state of electronic tranquillity are representing the physicality of the internet. “Our body, after all, really affects how we perceive the world around; it highlights those segments of the reality we focus on; we act like we are screens.”
The poetry in this film is meant to question cultural norms and rules and therefore suits as a perfect message to present the SS17 collection of Ab[Screenwear]. Head designer Olya Petrova Jackson says that she was looking to juxtapose skin and screen, “Chris’ poetry has a hashtag, abbreviated quality to it that is both deeply intimate and thrilling. Like phone alerts and notifications: they have an electronic origin, but they also are our phone’s only voice. Chris’ poetry is in a way a voice of my clothing.”
The collaborating artists wanted to celebrate the union of the body and the device: “Surfing the ocean and surfing the internet are very similar in a way. Same deep focus and flow. We love how we came to Breezy Point, one of the favourite surf spots in a close proximity to NY, which was a total coincidence, but in retrospect nothing is random.” Girls swaying together in a state of electronic tranquillity are representing the physicality of the internet. “Our body, after all, really affects how we perceive the world around; it highlights those segments of the reality we focus on; we act like we are screens.”
The poetry in this film is meant to question cultural norms and rules and therefore suits as a perfect message to present the SS17 collection of Ab[Screenwear]. Head designer Olya Petrova Jackson says that she was looking to juxtapose skin and screen, “Chris’ poetry has a hashtag, abbreviated quality to it that is both deeply intimate and thrilling. Like phone alerts and notifications: they have an electronic origin, but they also are our phone’s only voice. Chris’ poetry is in a way a voice of my clothing.”