Mundi Vondi’s : Rabbit Hole Movie

Dazed exclusively present the debut film of the Icelandic artist and designer and find out why he’s keeping it surreal.

Rabbit Hole is the first real foray into film by Icelandic designer and artist Mundi Vondi. Despite the fact the film features his outlandish and colourful designs, and premiered at Paris Fashion Week, Vondi is keen that his short is not misunderstood as a fashion film. in fact, Rabbit Hole is an enticingly surreal fable in the vein of Terry Gilliam and Alejandro Jodorowsky that features a young girl traversing a beautiful terrain full of strange and bizarre creatures. Set in an undefined future, or maybe past, the film evokes something of Luc Besson's early work The Last Battle, melded with a touch of the visual absurdity of Spike Milligan's post-apocalyptic classic The Bed-Sitting Room. Here, the first-time director tells us why he's interested in liquid clocks, creating puzzles and keeping it surreal.

Dazed Digital: What inspired Rabbit Hole? Are there any surrealist directors you particularly admire?Mundi Vondi: Rabbit Hole is about a small witch travelling around the highlands working on the most important quest of her life, and to get the job done she must put everything on the line... MUHAHAHAHAHAHA. The story happens in a very different time than ours, maybe a million years before, or a million years after, where values are as different as the beings that of this strange world. I like directors that push the limits of our understanding, such as Takashi Miike and David Lynch, and I love it when riddles are placed around the film for the audience to solve – when you create a riddle the answers must lie within the riddle itself, like a sudoku or a labyrinth.

DD: In making this film, were you coming from a more artistic angle than a fashion-orientated one?Mundi Vondi: I’m definitely approaching it from a more artistic angle. If you focus too much on the fashion, the main subject falls apart. I only look at fashion in terms of extreme costumes that help to create the characters. If you are making a film it has to be more focused on a story, a character, a plot... I think in some cases 'fashion films' are nothing more then a long dramatic commercial. They come to life when a lost photographer realises his new canon 5D Mark II has a video option, so instead of taking photos he makes a terrible video of skinny models jumping around in slow-motion!

DD: How inspired by myth and fairytale are you?Mundi Vondi: I love fairytales, especially the horrific ones with bad endings, like the real HC Andersen stories. What Disney has made of them is a fake lie for children, but I think they would be much better off hearing the real ones. There are a lot of old Icelandic stories and legends that are great. I recommend everyone reads them, you will get inspired by those cold and dark tales.

DD: There seems to be an element of the late 16th century painter Hieronymous Bosch in the film...Mundi Vondi: It’s funny you should say that because I've been very inspired by his work for a long time. In my drawings, you can sometimes really see that. I guess I'm permanently influenced by him. I also love Dali with his liquid clocks and and long-legged elephants – no one can say that's not the shit.

DD: What was the most fun you had on set? The guy on the horse looks like he is in a pretty uncomfortable position...Mundi Vondi: BAHAHAHAHA you are very right! He was like that for more than an hour, with a balloon strapped around his face crushing his nose in towards his brain. I can't say that was the most fun though… seeing the poor man suffering n'all, but he still remains one of the coolest characters in the film. We had a lot of great times shooting in the highlands – we had no cellphone connection and no internet, so we became very needy of each others social attention. In the end, we had become a family with no secrets, only love for one another. Then it all turned into a beautiful orgy where our bodies were joined into one... but I'll tell you more about that in private!

Take a look at the film here, i promise that it does not disappoint!
Rabbit Hole

Structure Semiotics

Semiotics of the structure, or structure semiotics, is a domain of research on the frontiers of graph theory and semiotics. It constitutes a practical way to semiotic modeling the structures and their properties^.
Under the structure be understand the general as well as the cognitive (epistemological) meaning of a structure as a relationship or organizational form of its elements. Semiotics of the structure can be one of the many kinds of object-oriented semiotics.

Objectives:

• Exploring the general meaning of structure and compilation its formalized interpretation
• Constructing a semiotic model of the structure
• Exploring the structural properties.

In each system have an important role their empirical properties of elements and relationships. Each system has a function and structure. Structure constitutes an abstraction of the system, its "skeleton", where its elements and relationships are loose empirical meanings and their diversity is expressed in the form of different positions in the structure. Structure is presentable in the form of a graph (mathematics) and is intimately related with invariance and isomorphism.

 The outcome, in a non mathematical sense is a map in skeleton form emulating elements and their relationships in a systematic way. Intricate shapes are formed, that i find inspiring.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), or magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize detailed internal structures. MRI makes use of the property of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to image nuclei of atoms inside the body.
An MRI machine uses a powerful magnetic field to align the magnetization of some atoms in the body, and radio frequency fields to systematically alter the alignment of this magnetization. This causes the nuclei to produce a rotating magnetic field detectable by the scanner—and this information is recorded to construct an image of the scanned area of the body.

Strong magnetic field gradients cause nuclei at different locations to rotate at different speeds. 3-D spatial information can be obtained by providing gradients in each direction.
MRI provides good contrast between the different soft tissues of the body, which makes it especially useful in imaging the brain, muscles, the heart, and cancers compared with other medical imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) or X-rays. Unlike CT scans or traditional X-rays, MRI uses no ionizing radiation.

Hence, a map of the body is created....

I think the MRI's of the brain are actually really beautiful if anything.

Super Contemporary Interviews: Neville Brody

In this video interview filmed by Dezeen for the Design Museum’s Super Contemporary exhibition, graphic designer Neville Brody talks about the key people, places and cultural movements in London that have defined his life in London (see movie below).

 http://vimeo.com/11165978

Dezeen Super Contemporary Interviews: Hussein Chalayan

In this video interview filmed by Dezeen for the Design Museum’s Super Contemporary exhibition, fashion designer Hussein Chalayan talks about his relationship with London and the way the city has influenced his work (see movie below).

http://vimeo.com/10604928

SWALLOWABLE PARFUME

http://vimeo.com/lucymcrae/swallowableparfum
Swallowable Parfum is a cosmetic capsule that enables human skin to emit a genetically unique scent about who we are and how we perform our identities. Fragrance molecules are excreted through the skin's surface during perspiration, leaving tiny golden droplets on the skin that emanate a unique odor. The skin becomes a platform, an atomizer; a biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body. swallowableparfum.com

Royal Academy's Aware: Art Fashion Identity

The third season of contemporary art at 6 Burlington Gardens examines how artists and designers use clothing as a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity.

The exhibition includes work by 30 leading international practitioners including Marina Abramović, Andreas Gursky, Claudia Losi, Susie MacMurray, La Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Yoko Ono, Grayson Perry, Dai Rees, Cindy Sherman, Helen Storey, Rosemarie Trockel, Sharif Waked, Gillian Wearing RA, Yohji Yamamoto and Andrea Zittel.

Also on display are new works by Yinka Shonibare and Hussein Chalayan, commissioned especially for Aware by London College of Fashion and the Royal Academy of Arts. Hussein Chalayan presents a new dress inspired by the 300 year old Japanese tradition of Bunraku puppet theatre while Yinka Shonibare has worked with bespoke tailor Chris Stevens to create 18 designs based on 19th-century children’s dress assembled to form a wall mural.

Storytelling:
Storytelling acknowledges the role of clothing in the representation of personal and cultural history. Grayson Perry’s Artist’s Robe, 2004, an elaborate, appliquéd coat made of a patchwork of luxurious fabrics, comments on the figure and status of the artist in the world today.

Grayson Perry
Artist's Robe, 2004This grand and elaborate robe combines historical references to the traditional kimono and the notion of clothing as an indicator of learning. It also refers to the uniforms associated with societies, clubs or academies, while commenting on the position and perception of the artist in contemporary society. The eye connotes wisdom and the artist’s role as an interrogator of the visual world.

 

Helen Storey
Say Goodbye, 2010Formerly a fashion designer, Storey has more recently investigated how science, art and fashion might come together in leading the way for a more sustainable future.
These dresses form part of her research into biodegradable materials: the enzyme-based textile will dissolve over time as it comes into contact with water. They also comment on contemporary society’s desire for a plentiful supply of clothing.

Building:
Building covers the concept of clothing being used as a form of protection and the notion of carrying one’s own shelter, referencing the nomadic, portable nature of modern life. On display is Shelter Me 1, 2005 by Mella Jaarsma who in her work parallels garment and architectural constructions. Jaarsma defines shelter as the minimal construction needed for protection, not yet the shape of a house, but directly related to the proportions of the human body.

Mella Jaarsma
Shelter Me 1, 2005
Born in Holland and now based in Indonesia, Jaarsma is interested in the process of adapting to the lifestyle and traditions of a new environment. This sculptural and mobile protective covering reflects the culture of the place in which it was made, the temple shape referring to the religious architecture of Yogyakarta. The refuge raises questions about migration and highlights two symbols of individual and social identity – clothing and habitat.

Azra Akšamija
Nomadic Mosque, 2005Acknowledging the need for flexibility in modern life, Akšamija has created a piece of wearable architecture. This private, mobile mosque redefines traditional places of worship for a contemporary context, and allows the individual the freedom to worship in any environment.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-contemporary-season-2010/exhibition/video-2,349,MA.html

Yohji Yamamoto
From the Yohji Yamamoto Femme Collection, Autumn/Winter 1991–92The fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto has clearly articulated his position on the industry in which he works – he dislikes fashion and feels that his role is to regain respect for clothing and promote women’s independence. In this seminal piece, a wooden framework is moulded into the form of a dress, suggesting a human skeleton, an architectural structure and armour. While in shape it recalls the constraining corsets that women used to wear, its robust appearance also asserts the strength of the person that might wear it. In Yamamoto’s hands a prosaic material becomes an unlikely adornment.

Belonging and Confronting:
Belonging and Confronting examines ideas of nationality as well as displacement and political and social confrontation, recognizing the tensions associated with the assimilation of new cultures and traditions. In Palestinian artist Sharif Waked’s video installation, Chic Point, 2003, the contradictory interpretations of revealing flesh as a fashion prerogative or as a humiliation juxtapose two worlds, one of high fashion and the other of semi-imprisonment.

Yinka Shonibare MBE
Little Rich Girls, 2010In this piece, specially commissioned for the exhibition, Shonibare continues his exploration of postcolonial Africa. The wax-printed cotton batik fabric that is a feature of all his work is strongly associated with Africa, but in fact was
originally designed and printed in Holland and exported when it found no market in Europe. The installation of children’s clothes underlines cultural crossovers and the relationship between developing nations on the West. Dutch wax-printed cotton

Performance:The importance of Performance in the presentation of fashion and clothing, and in highlighting the roles that we play in our daily life, is explored in the final section. It features film footage of Yoko Ono’s performance of Cut Piece at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York in 1965, for which the artist invited the public to cut strips from her clothing. While the scraps of fabric fall to the floor, the unveiling of the female body suggests the total destruction of the barriers imposed by convention.

Yoko Ono
Cut Piece, 1965Yoko Ono first performed this piece in Japan in 1964. She sits motionless on a stage while the public are invited to cut her clothing. Closely in tune with the second-wave feminist movement that began in the 1960s, the work explores women’s emancipation from constraints on their identity represented by clothing and encourages respect for the female body. Ultimately, it also suggests the value of nakedness as an expression of identity in its purest form.

Gillian Wearing
Sixty Second Silence, 1996This video piece examines the authority of clothing and the dynamic of the group. People dressed in police uniforms are arranged in the ranked pose of a formal photograph. As time elapses they start to fidget and the individuality of each participant emerges, diminishing the authority of their uniform, with all its associations of state and power.

Hussein Chalayan
‘Son’ of Sonzai Suru, 2010In this installation Chalayan uses Bunraku theatre, a traditional form of Japanese puppet theatre, to examine the manipulative
element of the fashion industry. The beauty of the dress is evident, but the controlling figures around it invite us to consider how our perception of the value of fashion is managed by its presentation. The piece demonstrates Chalayan’s ease in bringing together different cultures and creative disciplines.

 http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-contemporary-season-2010/exhibition/hussein-chalayan,361,MA.html

Sharif Waked: Chic Point Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints

Sharif Waked was born in Nazareth to a Palestinian refugee family from the village of Mjedil. He lives and works in Haifa/Nazareth. Waked has exhibited at various biennials, museums, and art venues internationally.

His work, Chic Point is a seven minute video that ponders, imagines, and interrogates "fashion for Israeli checkpoints." Set to the backdrop of a heavy rhythmic beat, men model one design after another in an exploration of form and content. Zippers, weaved nets, hoods, and buttons serve the unifying theme of exposed flesh. Body parts - lower backs, chests, abdomens - peek through holes, gaps, and splits woven into readymade silk and cotton t-shirts, robes, and shirts. Raw materials and standard clothes are transformed into pieces that follow normative fashion standards while calling them into question.

As the sights and sounds of the fast paced catwalk dim to a close, the viewer is transported to the West Bank and Gaza. A series of stills taken from the years 2000 to 2003 display Palestinian men traversing the profoundly violent but highly common Israeli checkpoint. One man after another lifts shirts, robes, and jackets. Some kneel shirtless, others naked, with guns poised at their exposed flesh. Men in Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Kalandiya, Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, and Gaza City wrangle with the Israeli state’s security apparatus.

Chic Point brings these two locations together in a reflection on politics, power, aesthetics, the body, humiliation, surveillance, and chosen as opposed to forced nudity. The world of high fashion is an interlocutor for the stark reality of imposed closure. The body of the Palestinian, today commonly understood by the Israeli state as a dangerous weapon, is brought to the viewer’s eye in the flesh. Chic Point bares the loaded politics of the gaze as it documents the thousands of moments in which Palestinians are daily forced to nude themselves in the face of interrogation and humiliation, as they attempt to move through the intricate and constantly expanding network of Israeli checkpoints.

Ahmed Mater

Born in 1979, Ahmed Mater lives and works in Abha, capital of the mountainous Aseer region in southern Saudi Arabia, where he combines his career as an artist with that of a medical doctor at the local hospital.

Mater may best be described as an illuminator of both form and ideas and a man of energy and few habits. It is from this knowledge of both loss and enlightenment that Mater appears to have the ability to move from expressing sadness and anger to sharing his insights with a sense of humor and lifegiving lightness. In the work which has brought him fame in both Europe and the Middle East, he combined explicit notes from his medical education with a palimpsest of religious symbols and cultural references.
  

Illumination (Ottoman Waqf)   

"I was drawn to the skeleton at the centre of the canvas, fascinated by the complexity of this painting, and in curator mode attempted to decode it."

Gold Leaf, Tea, Pomegranate, Dupont Chinese ink & offset X-Ray film print  on paper
H152 CM x W 102 CM x 2
2010
Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection

Magnetism Installation - Prototype 1

"The idea is simple, like its central element, forcefully attractive. Mater gives a twist to a magnet and sets in motion tens of thousands of particles of iron..."

Magnetism Installation - Prototype I
Magnets and Iron Filings
2008

Evolution of Man
“I am a country man and at the same time, the son of this strange, scary oil civilisation. In ten years our lives changed completely.."

Evolution of Man
Lightbox
H79.2 CM X W59.4CM
2010

5 silk-screen prints signed and numbered by the artist Printed with 11 colours on 400GSM Somerset Tub paper

H80 x W60cm (each)

Edition size: 100 + 10AP’s

2010

 Yellow Cow

"Ahmed took a childhood story from his mosque and renewed it, by wondering what would have happened if the cow was still alive"

ellow Cow Cheese (Red) 142 x 114cm
Silkscreen Print
Edition of 35
2010

http://ahmedmater.com/