This, she explains, is the “Balenciaga principle,” which follows the principle of privatization in the former states of the Eastern block: you don’t find a plot of land and designate its area as private property; instead, you designate everything around it to be. It isn’t the form of the bag that is privatized by Balenciaga, Trakolovic continues, but everything surrounding it: “First of all, the labour of image making, uploading, sharing, but also other out-of-frame activities and user preferences that are tracked, accumulated, harvested and mined.”

fashion has always been a highly right wing construct throughout history, those who ventured off into the left have been virtually erased from its history. there literally is no place for fashion to exist if we want to live in a world that respects human rights (i worked in fashion but luckily walked away lol)

THE TRUMP BALENCIAGA COMPLEX: Hito Steyerl and a book by Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie demonstrate what the Trump and Brexit campaigns have learned from fashion. Text: Kolja Reichert "Images no longer represent but predict and manufacture reality, and where people don’t simply sit in front of screens anymore but are themselves nodes in a network flooded with cultural content that they consume and forward. In this world, every gaze is a source of commercial speculation, being tracked, stored, sold, and retargeted. As Trakilović puts it toward the end of the 45 minute video: “Pictures become frames or containers for invisible trails of information and the source material for rampant commodification.” "Balenciaga and Vetements appeal not only to the global elite, but to this post ‘89 generation specifically, because these brands are crafted on meme-bait strategies. They test on principles of framing and reframing, thereby co-opting consumers in creating hype.” "Wylie recalls of Cambridge Analytica’s business model, “we were verging on a new area akin to ‘cultural finance.’ We thought that if we got it right, we could run simulations of different futures of whole societies.” His assumption that political changes follow in the steps of cultural ones was in tune with Bannon’s goals for Breitbart. “Political extremism, for example, is a cultural activity with parallels in fashion,” writes Wiley. “They’re both based on how cultural information proliferates through the nodes of a network.” "Identity is currently an opioid for the masses,” says Steyerl. “It is a free handout for people who have little else. But like a lot of seemingly free stuff in digital economies it comes with a lot of toxic strings attached. Above all, the idea that one can’t change. Identity means that if you are poor, deal with it, apparently you are born this way. Identities are a trap to keep people in their places and divie them."

The fact that this is an art exhibit makes me feel a bit uneasy. I like/respect Hyto Steryl so not trying to hate. But this really feels like art world critiquing fashion when they both pretty much provide the same exact function. Again totally understand that Hyto is not a “blockbuster artist” so in some ways she’s punching up? but still... Why isn’t this a documentary accessible to everyone? Why are these ideas communicated in via a third hand description of an art installation? Why do you need an augmented reality app to navigate the exhibit!?!? This makes it feel elitist, exclusive and over the top. I think the ideas are super important. It’s great that we’re starting to wake up from Balanciaga’s nihilistic spell. But there is a huge disconnect between the ideas and the form that they take here. The exhibition looks like the very thing it’s trying to critique. I’m sure it’s ‘self aware’ of that but it doesn’t help... heels very tiring.