How To: Untitled Runway Show

How To: Untitled Runway Show is an artist’s book that presents K8 Hardy’s performance Untitled Runway Show, created for the 2012 Whitney Biennal. For this work, Hardy orchestrated a live fashion show performance on the fourth floor of the Breuer building that rivaled the presentations made during a Paris or New York fashion week.

How To: Untitled Runway Show follows the apparatus of professional fashion and is organized around three sections: The Show (lookbook), Backstage, and The Campaign. For each of these sections, Hardy specifically created a new series of images for the book. As well, five texts were specially written for this publication, many of whom were involved themselves in the original performance. John Kelsey contributes an important critical text that gives context to this performance in the bigger picture of Hardy’s entire practice. The variety of the writing in this book and perspectives on the piece bring a crucial understanding and richness to Hardy’s incredible performance and unconventional work in general.

K8 Hardy (USA, *1977) is a New-York-based artist, one of the founders of the queer feminist art collective LTTR and creator of the cult zine fashionfashion. In her work Hardy often uses fashion as a material to sculpt, photograph, and produce performances interchangeably and simultaneously, creating a new genderqueer vision.