Prada Mode London: The art of watching in the age of distraction

In a city already swollen with art-world luminaries and Frieze hangers-on, Prada’s thirteenth edition of Prada Mode - the fashion house’s roving cultural salon - felt like both an oasis and a provocation. Installed in the newly restored Town Hall in King’s Cross, the two-day event (15–16 October 2025) turned its gaze inward, asking not what we look at, but how we look.

Titled The Audience, the project was conceived by Scandinavian art duo Elmgreen & Dragset, whose work often skewers the rituals and absurdities of public life. Here, they built a kind of meta-cinema: a blurred, looping film played before a cluster of hyperrealistic sculptures frozen mid-gaze, mid-thought, mid-boredom. A woman in the café next door, locked in perpetual FaceTime with one of the film’s characters, completed the mise-en-scène - a self-conscious hall of mirrors reflecting on what it means to be seen, to watch, to scroll.

As installations go, it was quietly devastating. Where the luxury world often flirts with spectacle, The Audience was all about the loss of it: the difficulty of holding attention in an era when everything demands it.

Across two days, Prada Mode London unfolded as a festival of sorts - half-conference, half-club night - exploring the habits and politics of spectatorship. On opening day, cultural scholar Kirsty Sedgman led a talk aptly titled Sit Down and Be Quiet, tracing the history of audience behaviour from the Victorian theatre to TikTok. Later, production designers Shona Heath and James Price dissected how cinematic spaces manipulate not just characters but viewers themselves - a conversation that felt particularly apt amid Prada’s own brand of architectural seduction.

As night fell, the mood shifted. Spoken-word artist James Massiah performed before taking a turn behind the decks, while Lynda Dawn and ENNY brought soulful warmth to the cavernous space. The evening climaxed with a party soundtracked by Mimi Xu, SBTRKT, and Call Super - a collision of high theory and hedonism that felt distinctly, delightfully London.

The second day deepened the dialogue. A discussion between Elizabeth Diller (of Diller Scofidio + Renfro fame) and Elmgreen & Dragset wrestled with the elasticity of museums and the performative nature of public space. Later, Sir Isaac Julien reflected on multiplicity - of audiences, of formats, of histories - in a conversation moderated by Efe Çakarel. His meditation on how streaming platforms reshape the very notion of cinematic viewing underscored the event’s central anxiety: what happens to art when attention itself becomes the commodity?

Between live performances by Léa Sen, Tony Njoku, and Bendik Giske, and a gleefully anarchic acting piece titled The Audience, the event never quite settled into one tone - and that seemed precisely the point.

By the time it opened to the public on 17 October, Prada Mode London had already passed through the city like a beautifully composed question. In an art world often obsessed with visibility, Elmgreen & Dragset - and Prada by extension - reminded us that looking is never neutral. To watch is to choose, to interpret, to participate.

And perhaps, in a moment of collective distraction, that’s the most radical act left.