Prada presented the thirteenth iteration of Prada Mode at Town Hall, the recently restored landmark in King’s Cross in London, in collaboration with the artists Elmgreen & Dragset on October 15th and 16th, 2025. Coinciding with Frieze London, the multi-day event centered around The Audience, an immersive installation in the form of a cinema that is both a sculptural environment and a meditation on spectatorship in the age of image overload, hyperconnectivity, and attention deficit.
In the space, an intentionally blurred film, written by Elmgreen & Dragset, repeats in a constant loop. In the physical cinema environment, five of the auditorium seats are occupied by hyperrealistic sculptures of cinemagoers posed in various states of attention. The film’s narrative continues with an additional sculpture, entitled The Conversation. In this work, a female figure sits alone at a café table, FaceTiming with one of the characters from the film.
Prada Mode London included talks, conversations, film screenings, performances, and DJ sets to further explore the idea of spectatorship and open up new ways of thinking about how audiences gather, watch, and engage.
Day 1 – Prada Mode London
On October 15th, Prada Mode London began with an array of activities and a private dinner in honor of Elmgreen & Dragset, followed by a party.
The opening day featured two talks:
- The lecture “Sit Down and Be Quiet” by Kirsty Sedgman. Kirsty is an award-winning cultural studies scholar specializing in audiences, experience, behavior, and communication. Her work investigates how people find value in cultural participation. How do they experience and respond to the things they see? How are these pleasures and disappointments made meaningful within their lives? And what can all this tell us about the role of the arts in society, as well as the relationship between cultural institutions, power, identity, and place? As a self-proclaimed “doctor of audiences,” Sedgman gave a talk on the history of audiences and audience behavior, how audiences find value in cultural participation and how the digital era might have altered the way we see things.
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The conversation “Designing For an Audience, Real and Unreal” with Shona Heath and James Price, moderated by Paolo Moretti. In this talk they explored how spatial design can communicate values, desires, and narratives. What expectations do production designers have for how people — their audience — interact with and understand their vision? How does collaboration across practices influence the process? How do they think about the audience in terms of inspiration, conceptualization, development, refinement, collaboration, and potential co-authorship? Can actors also be seen as “members of the audience” for a set designer? How does the cinema audience read, inhabit, and co-create the aesthetic of a film?
– Spoken word performance by James Massiah
– Afternoon DJ set by James Massiah.
– Live music performance by Lynda Dawn and by ENNY during the daytime.
A party featuring DJ sets by Mimi Xu, SBTRKT, and Call Super.
Day 2 – Prada Mode London
On October 16th, Prada Mode London revolved around the following program:
The second day featured two conversations:
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The conversation “Performing Publics” between Elizabeth Diller and Elmgreen & Dragset. The talk was a reflection on audiences, institutions, and the role of museums in public life. Elmgreen & Dragset are known for installations that push against established codes of exhibition-making. Diller’s projects reconfigure traditional modes of spectatorship, including New York City’s High Line. Together, they considered how cultural spaces can both challenge and engage their audiences, and how these spaces can be flexible and incorporate different kinds of use, stories, and audiences.
- The conversation “The Audience Is Many” with Sir Isaac Julien, moderated by Efe Çakarel. During the talk, they reflected on the multiplicity of audiences that his work addresses. Addressing his films on figures such as Langston Hughes and Derek Jarman to multi-screen installations, Julien considered how being the audience of other artists’ works has informed his own, and how he uses different strategies to convey both his ideas and those of the artists who inspire him. The conversation explored the shifting contexts in which his work circulates — from cinema and festivals to museums and streaming platforms. How might these different modes of distribution transform the viewing experience, expand the reach of his work, and influence how he conceptualizes it during the creative process?
– “The Audience – live acting performances” with Calum Goring and Toby Webster
– DJ BOBBY. performance during the afternoon.
– Live music performances by Léa Sen, Tony Njoku, and Bendik Giske
Prada Mode London opened to the public from October 17th to 19th 2025.