Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller and filmmaker and visual artist Josh Blaaberg have been commissioned by Frieze and Gucci to create films inspired by the ‘Second Summer of Love’, the explosion of electronic music and youth culture which swept the UK and Europe in 1988.

These commissions join Wu Tsang’s film Into A Space Of Love, a magical realist documentary exploring the legacies of house music in New York underground culture, which premiered at Frieze New York in May 2018. The films will be screened together for the first time at Frieze London in October 2018, followed by a discussion with the artists.

Art and cinema are both powerful creative forces that inspire and unite people across cultural and national boundaries. That is the viewpoint behind Gucci working with Frieze Studios, which is a new creative production house initiating collaborative projects which bring art and cultural criticism to life.

Thirty years on from 1988’s Second Summer of Love, the impact of the radical youth movement which exploded around acid house can be seen in almost every facet of contemporary culture. From LGBT nightclubs in New York to the warehouses of Berlin or illegal raves around the M25, acid house sound-tracked the frantic dismantling of old certainties, and the rewiring of a new social order just as potent and influential as the original counterculture of the late 1960s.

Its echoes can be heard in every corner of modern music, from the mainstream pop charts to the experimental fringes. Just as importantly, it can be seen throughout contemporary visual culture, from street style to the catwalk, and via its influence on the lives and work of contemporary artists.

The Second Summer of Love series explores acid house’s enduring impact on international contemporary culture, tracing its lineage from the home-grown Italian disco scene of the mid-1980s, via the adoption of European synth sounds in the burgeoning house and techno cultures of Chicago, Detroit and New York, to rave’s permanent rupturing and rebuilding of British identity.

The series is accompanied by four 60-second prelude films directed by Adam Csoka Keller and
Evelyn Benčičová.

The films, Everybody in The Place and Distant Planet: The Six Chapters of Simona will be screened exclusively at the Gucci Wooster cinema space in New York from 6 to 20 July, with four special screenings per day.

6–12 July: Everybody in The Place
Monday-Saturday: 1pm, 2pm, 5pm, 6pm
Sunday: 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm

13–20 July: Distant Planet: The Six Chapters of Simona
Monday-Saturday: 1pm, 2pm, 5pm, 6pm
Sunday: 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm