Film UbuWebBernadette Corporation
Hell Frozen Over (2000)
Claire Fontaine, Bernadette Corporation & Reena Spaulings - Imperio (2007) ABC [w/Sylvère Lotringer] (2017)
Since 1994, the anonymous, non-hierarchical group of artists known as Bernadette Corporation has explored strategies of cultural resistance and détournement. Adopting a quasi-corporate identity, complete with logo, "training" videos, and a dispersed, multi-national membership, the mutable collective has appropriated contemporary entertainment modes for their own experimental purposes. From the New York-based BC fashion label, which garnered a cult following from 1995 to 1997, and the magazine Made In USA, launched in 1999, to the collectively-authored novel Reena Spaulings (Semiotexte, 2005) and a series of videos starring the likes of Sylvère Lotringer and Chloe Sevigny, Bernadette Corporation's interventionist projects amount to a precisely-calibrated critique of a global culture that constructs identity through consumption and branding. Bernadette Corporation was formed in a Manhattan nightclub in 1994, and began organizing DIY social events that evolved into unauthorized art carnivals in SoHo parking lots. From 1995 to 1997, the group worked under the guise of an underground fashion label. In 1999 it self-published a magazine, Made in USA, and began producing videos. In 2005 Bernadette Corporation authored the collective novel Reena Spaulings, which was published by Semiotext(e). Bernadette Corporation has exhibited works at international venues including Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York (2002); Yvon Lambert, Paris (2004); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2005); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005); Der Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany (2006), and Perros Negros, Mexico City (2007), among others. -- EAI