LONDON.- Today Frieze announced the international artists participating in Frieze Film 2017, a series of new film commissions premiered at Frieze London and broadcast on national television. Alex Bag, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir and Raphaela Vogel will create new works as part of Frieze Projects, the fair’s celebrated non-profit programme curated by Raphael Gygax. Taking place at Frieze London in The Regent’s Park from 5–8 October 2017, Frieze Film is supported by Channel 4’s Random Acts.

Featuring major artists of different generations, this year’s Frieze Film programme explores themes of surrealism, popular myth and the carnivalesque. Highly influential American artist Alex Bag, known for her video performances since the 1990s, subverts the vocabularies of advertising, music videos and reality TV to critique today’s neo-liberal structures. Mixing pop culture with elements of Surrealism, French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin’s theatrical films take history or myth as their points of departure and use improvisation, excessive characters and strange forms to create a ‘patchwork narration’. Peopled with hybrid and sexually charged beings, the video works of Icelandic artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir are distinguished by a meditative narrative structure, fed by Nordic sagas and irrational drives. And in films that play with the dichotomy between the ‘romantic’ and the ‘raw’, German artist Raphaela Vogel uses a drone to film her own body from a ‘hornet perspective’, questioning the fe/male gaze, and how technology interferes with the physical self.

Each film will premiere in the Frieze London auditorium during the fair (5–8 October 2017) and later show as part of Random Acts, Channel 4’s short-form strand dedicated to the arts.

Since its foundation in 2007, Frieze Film has seen the creation of more than 25 short artists’ films. Presenting the work of a diverse selection of international artists, both emerging and established, the programme provides a snapshot of current tendencies within the medium. Frieze Film is supported by Channel 4’s Random Acts. Established in 2011, Random Acts has also built an impressive history of supporting creative expression from a range of producers. This partnership allows artists the opportunity to bring their work to new audiences. Frieze Film forms part of Frieze Projects, the annual non-profit programme at Frieze London, established in 2003 and curated in 2016 by Raphael Gygax (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich).