Culture Klatsch

Chicks on Speed

Still fuelled by the feather-ruffling politics, creativity and collaborative adrenaline of its core members, multidisciplinary pioneers Chicks on Speed, take their self-proclaimed ‘project’ to new highs.

Fashion as Song: Collaboration in Design - Chicks on Speed for Design Victoria


Formed in 1997 at the Munich Arts Academy, experimental performance art group Chicks on Speed graduated from playing rock, paper, scissors as an accidental electro-clash band clad in homemade fashion, to multi-disciplinary, cross-genre, DIY pioneers with a worldwide following.

Their art ‘happens’ sans frontieres in makeshift digs, small galleries and in major museums such as the Tate, Pompidou and MOMA alike.

At its core, are founding members expatriates Alex Murray Leslie, from Bowral in NSW, and Melissa Logan, a native of Upstate New York. Initially joined by Kiki Moorse, a Berliner who has since left the core group to focus on her career as a DJ, they now work with a rolling roster of international collaborators from a diversity of media.

Chicks on Speed is less immediate synthetic rush and more about long term aesthetic high. A self proclaimed ‘project’ still fuelled by the politics, creativity and collaborative adrenaline of its two core members. Graphic, video and performance artists, painters, musicians, DJ’s, installationists, writers, filmmakers, fashion designers, producers, even models for Lagerfeld’s lens, COS has defied categorisation for over a decade. All this activity has informed rather than diluted the group’s creative output. That the Chicks have sustained a working relationship that continues to evolve is in large part due to its collaborative processes.

They have managed to defy artistic conventions and design imprimaturs, combine and then blur boundaries, convince and confound their critics and admirers all over the world.

Today, they live and work internationally, both collaborating with and antagonising the status quo, working with likeminded artists in multi-disciplines and with entrepreneurial juggernauts in a paradox that is neatly resolved with one of their masterfully pre-emptive catchphrases: Sell out before you get sold out.

Serious although often boldly confrontational, controversial, ribald, ironic and satiric with a candid approach to performance, role-playing and playing with roles, their stagecraft is carefully curated but leaves space open for spontaneous collaborations.

They have achieved much in each separate artistic medium they have tackled in their 11 year history, but it is convergence and collision of, between and across disciplines that continues to challenge these adrenaline fuelled artists. Creative conflict catalyses new experimental art forms.

Subverting the paradigm is key and that’s what still makes this group of genre-bending artisans such an innovative creative co-op. They see the new possibilities in everything they experience from material concerns to gender politics, fashion, art and music to corporate responsibility. And in partnering these accessories, their shoes and handbags don’t always match.

COS’ unselfconscious dedication to innovative ideas and approaches in their repertoire of lampoon/pop/burlesque/satire/corrective purpose drives their naked provocation of the guardians of cultural shibboleths.

They respond to their immediate environments with apparently unchoreographed delight and carefully orchestrated mayhem; taking whatever is to hand, they highlight points of difference and document the outcome. If art is in immediacy, designing its direction is where COS’ creative strength is drawn.

A dedicated work ethic sees them travel the globe taking on new projects and re-imagining existing sets.

In March 2008, Design Victoria filmed the seminar Collaboration in Design: Fashion as Song which was presented by Chicks on Speed in Melbourne. Lani Steinberg met with Alex Murray Leslie, Melissa Logan and touring member Kathi Glass to talk about the fine art of collaboration in all its artforms. From internet piracy and enabling technologies to cutting edge collaborations with media large and small, audience give and take and the multiculture of genre-bending, COS discuss how and why Art Rules.

Click here to download a PDF of the extended interview. 

Related Links

www.chicksonspeed.com
www.myspace.com/chicksonspeed
www.chicksonspeed-records.com

Lani Steinberg for Design Victoria
7 May 2008


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