Formed in a New York night club in 1994, Bernadette Corporation is an art collective phenomenon whose multi-disciplinary production challenged conservative and capitalist political culture in the throws of the dot-com boom. Their original role as party organizers quickly developed into anti-commodity and DIY fashion design, and then on to publishing their magazine project ‘Made in USA’ - named after what they reckon is “Godard’s worst film”.

Their work was celebrated by the likes of Chris Kraus and cult art dealer Colin de Land, and by the year 2000, Bernadette Corporation found exhibition support through major institutions. It was around this time when BC made their foray into filmmaking. ‘Hell Frozen Over’ (2000) was the first of their run of film and video production.

Bernadette Corporation describes ‘Hell Frozen Over’ as “a fashion film about the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and the color white.” The film weaves footage of a haute couture fashion shoot (very much inspired by the early work of BC) with unscripted and impromptu speech by famed semiologist Sylvère Lotringer on the work of poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The film is centrally concerned with nothingness - the vacuous nature of fashion and surface-level looks, the emptiness of the color white, and the barren landscape of a frozen-over lake. BC take on an intellectual debate on meaning and nothingness, and fuse it with pop-culture appeal, featuring music from an eclectic pool of artists - from The Beatles, to Cat Stevens, to Schubert. Just like Bernadette Corporation’s works that have come before it, ‘Hell Frozen Over’ is a self-conscious and antagonist approach. They’re anti- fashion, business, and corporation - but they know their work may never escape the structures which confine them.

Text by Laura Jacobs