Interview

Last night's unveiling of the video for "Telephone" was an important event in gay bars and coffee shops worldwide, one that finally brought together two long-contentious fashionable tribes: fans of Lady Gaga and fans of  Beyonce. The video was significant for manifold other reasons. The nine-and-a-half-minute video was the second collaboration of Gaga and Swedish director Jonas Akerlund, and the singer even gets a co-writing credit on it (Notable dialogue: "You've been a very, very bad girl, Gaga," followed by the two sharing some kind of truck stop snack cake). This was also the  longest time on record that we have seen Lady Gaga's face. Previously, it had been withheld like a holy grail with veils, Photoshop, and rapid-fire editing. We also see all of Gaga's lithe body, and at one point her blurred-out crotch. One grail remains un-captured, the blurring suggests.

Outside gay bars (but in a related domain) there was another cause for celebration. "Telephone" is a nearly ten-minute commercial for the brands Gaga loves, both ironically and not. Click for our top moments in the video's product placement:

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When boundary-testing, often Southwest-inspired Japanese brand Number (N)ine announced a year ago that they would be closing their doors forever, the fashion community mourned the loss of a great and unique men's label. But for Takahiro Miyashita, the chief designer at Number (N)ine, forever has proven too long. Launching tomorrow, March 13, Takahiro's new collaboration with Converse will be available worldwide, re-punctuating the end of a historic brand in the form of a shag sneaker. Drawing inspiration from Converse's storied history , Takahiro has re-envisioned the classic Chuck Taylor and One Star kicks in white and yellow, using unfinished deerskin and shag suede to give the shoes a uniquely textured aesthetic. In an homage to the Converse sneakers of the ‘70s, the laces are set off-center, adding another twist to an already revised silhouette. Though this seems to be the end of Number (N)ine (unless we are surprised by a second encore), I doubt we have seen the last of Takahiro Miyashita. When and how he will re-appear... that is the question.

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INSTALLATION VIEW COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER

Diana Thater's latest film installation, Between Science and Magic, closing this Saturday, is a layered study of process in keeping with the artist's two-decade investigation into timeless dialectics: human and animal; culture and nature; and now science and magic. The looped 12-minute projection records a projection being done at a French Rococo film palace in Los Angeles. The frame captures the ornate proscenium and the screen it encloses, which features two figures on soundstages separated by a central, white-on-white seam.

The film starts just before curtain up. Once it's risen, the internal film begins: the left side of the screen shows an over-the-shoulder shot of a camera operator; the right, a head-on shot of a tuxedoed magician. While the camera operator records, the magician displays his tools (top hat, table, cloth) and recites the gestures that culminate in pulling a white rabbit out of his hat. He repeats the trick, and each time he begins anew, the orientation of the camera operator changes. Either side of the frame is a recording taken simultaneously from different angles. The right maintains its angle, fixed on the magician frontally, and the left orbits the scene, hitting 16 stations for the 16 repetitions of the performance. This choreography is not unlike the routes of planetary bodies. The motions are slow, certain, and difficult to grasp from a static vantage point.

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PHOTOS BY GILLES UZAN

Californian photographer Todd Selby is sitting on a bed in the window of Parisian boutique Colette, in the midst of recronstructed teenager's room. Unaffected by a crowd giggling around him, he orders room service and answers interviews. It's the picture of a master of his domain—or at least someone so terribly fascinated with the idea of a domain that he brings it around with him.

Selby was in the store from March 1–6 promoting his new book, The Selby in Your House (Abrams). In keeping with the store's ethos, the book is in limited release there until worldwide release in mid-May 2010. At Colette, the photographer who has made a career photographing the curated clutter of other people's homes without revealing his own, offered a peek into his bedroom—or at least a vision of it.

Selby has been around as a fashion and lifestyle photographer for years, but only started his popular interiors web site, the Theselby.com. He made his name by shooting the stuff—the collections and the "matter out of place," rather than the space, of creative people worldwide. This wasn't MTV's "Cribs"; this was serious people whose homes might be seriously interesting. All of it was told with a bit of fun: these people had a lot of stuff, but not an embarrassment of it, and they were willing to share and dress up in different clothes for the occasion.

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