Story

november 3, 2016

It is not until recently that the monDieu logo has redeemed its place as crest of our website. As many of you might have noticed, the top spot was occupied by another logo for a critical amount of time. Internationally rising fashion art festival UNCONTAMINATED has succided in doing a massive monDieu takeover, so for a long time all our published content was UNCONTAMINATED material only. The online conquest is still just a tiny fracture of all the drama that went down. It all began a while before the cold autumn festival days. On a warm summer evening at the edge of night, right before a golden red sun disappeared behind the St.Hans Hill, monDieu Editor Maren Serine was taken captive and persuaded to take the title Editor for UNCONTAMINATED.

The elegant abduction went down in a rather unusual way. Maren Serine had voluntarily arrived at a trendy wine bar in Oslo to meet with Torstein Lohne, Rita Larsen and Hilde Reljin. Her friend Torstein had gotten involved with UNCONTAMINATED through his studies at School of Fashion Industry. Some weeks ago he had invited her to contribute to the festival with a few texts presenting artists from the festival line-up. Right now, thinking back, it is quite funny to remember how the four of them nibbled from a little cheese plate that evening as the whole situation turned out to be a giant mousetrap.

Torstein had been the first one to arrive at the wine bar dressed in dark and heavy clothes, almost as a reminder of that fall was coming. Maren Serine arrived shortly after with khaki capris and cream colored knitwear. The two of them ordered drinks and something to eat before they settled for a table out on the sidewalk. Moments later, Hilde strutted smiling towards them with a long summer dress blowing in the cool breeze behind her and a big leather bag on her arm. The three of them had already finished at least half of the cheese plate and Hilde had even revealed details about next year’s festival when Rita joined them in an elegant black outfit, wondering out loud if anyone else than her would like a glass of Champagne.

A few weeks later it was time for the UNCONTAMINATED team photo shoot by resident photographer Yoo Sun. That sunny afternoon Maren Serine got out of her friend’s car in the East part of Oslo and checked out the old factory buildings towering high above her. Up in a contrastingly white and fancy photo studio inside its red brick exterior, she met the tall, blonde and adventurous UNCONTAMINATED co-Editor Bodil Fuhr. Some weeks after the photoshoot the two co-Editors had completed their written presentation of this year’s festival. After intense days and nights of close collaboration the result of their joined writing was ready: a balance between the abstract and the exact.

The bliss of having completed the UNCONTAMINATED publication didn’t last long as Hilde and Rita’s plans for monDieu suddenly became far more complicated. One day before their festival, they took the other monDieu Editor, Luca, and by that their takeover was complete. Meanwhile Maren Serine had been sent out to talk with invited local artists preparing their pop-up exhibitions and Luca had to publish everything along the way.

And then: During the two days of UNCONTAMINATED 2016, monDieu had the pleasure of talking with:

10 Magazine
Let’s Panic Magazine
Festival Curator Riccardo Ruini
Bob Recine
Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton
Synchrodogs
Charlie Engman
Amanda Charchain
Arielle Chiara and Zoe Bleu
Isabel Martinez
Void
Planeta

The line-up and international media interviews and will be published soon.