Lecture

The Berlin Sessions:
Claudia Skoda on art and fashion in West Berlin

Dates

Wed, 28.02.18

Time

19:00

Admission

free

Venue

Berlinische Galerie, Eberhard-Roters-Saal, Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin

Claudia Skoda came to fashion design in the mid-1970s and has since remained faithful to her avantgardistic concept. The distinctive style of her body-hugging knit dresses made of wafer-thin yarns has made her one of the most influential knitwear designers worldwide.

The factory floor on Zossener Straße in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where she used to live and work with other artists, was a playground of the avant-garde. When Skoda staged her fashion shows, Iggy Pop, Martin Kippenberger and David Bowie came by. Her models were actors, the show a spectacle. People all over Berlin spoke about her happenings and compared the so called„Fabrikneu“ with Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York. Skoda opened her first shop in SoHo, New York, In the 1980s and returned to her hometown Berlin in 1987.

Within The Berlin Sessions, Claudia Skoda talks about her work as a designer, the interfaces to fine arts and her life in Berlin during the German (pre-) reunification time.

The program of The Berlin Sessions in February 2018 is a collaboration of KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur.

www.berlinischegalerie.de

Part of project: The Berlin Sessions

Since February 2017, KW Institute for Contemporary Art organized a series of monthly public talks in collaboration with various institutions and organizations located in Berlin. The series entitled The Berlin Sessions explored the fabric of cultural producers in the city by inviting one Berlin-based speaker to give a presentation on another cultural producer that he/she/they find inspiring. The goal of the lecture series was to highlight the work of Berlin-based creatives from the perspective of their peers; to map connections between the various producers and fields and to strengthen the existing networks between locally based artists, authors, musicians, performers, researchers and other creative producers.