Prada Mode Paris

Prada presents the fourth iteration of Prada Mode, the travelling social club with a focus on contemporary culture that provides members a unique cultural experience along with music, dining, and conversations.

Set to align with the opening of Paris Haute Couture on 19–20 January 2020, Prada Mode Paris will occupy Maxim’s, the legendary, 1893 Belle Époque restaurant.

For Prada Mode Paris, the iconic restaurant will be transformed by AI researcher and professor Kate Crawford and artist and researcher Trevor Paglen into an installation titled “Making Faces” which presents both a history and future of AI training images and take a critical look at current surveillance and policing systems, all mapped on the art nouveau interior of Maxim’s.

The space serves as a reminder of the dark histories from which contemporary facial recognition systems have emerged. Pages from phrenology and physiognomy textbooks mix with historical mugshots, and “training images” used for facial recognition software appear with patent applications from major tech companies. Throughout Maxim’s, artefacts such as phrenological busts, calipers, antique manuals and books, and all manner of measurement tools used to study faces and heads over the last two hundred years are hidden inside the historical architecture of the club.

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