EAGERLY ANTICIPATING : HEDI SLIMANE: California Song: MOCA Pacific Design Center :From November 12, 2011, through January 22

Select California bands will contribute to the installation, using a fragmentary sound system, and panoramic scores

Hedi Slimane's "Califorina Period" did more than extend his signature explorations of urban youth culture out of the European platforms of Berlin and London. It also gave his photography the merit of truly capturing in an unprecedented way the ideal of youth in that California context . Slimane achieved this in a way no other photographer of this generation did . Quality of light met a defined quality of life and, as such , mutual myths (of both Slimane and of California's youth) were perpetrated. Clips from the press release post jump

Slimane's exhibition at MOCA will be divided into two parts. An installation and a series of black-and-white print photographs from his California years will be presented on the ground floor, and a sonic, motion-photography installation, produced specifically for MOCA, will be featured on the second floor. The installation will reference a multi-projection, cubic, architectural format, which Slimane has constructed in previous exhibitions to present his photographs, using serial construction and repetition to create an archaic form of cinematic narration. Slimaneʼs allusive portraiture, in which photographs, portraits, and still life compositions are often signs or fragments of a portrait, will be projected in a repetitive, almost ritual, manner. The installation will also address “performance act,” as defined for the first time in Slimaneʼs photographic essay, Stage (2004), and will include a live performance space underneath the projection.

Select California bands, such as No Age, will contribute to the installation, using a fragmentary sound system, and composing panoramic scores—extended, visual song formats—which will form a dialogue with and define a sonic vocabulary for the
photographs.