He greets you at the door in a pair of knit chaps and a zippered top with fuchsia-lined slits that reveal pink nipples and his navel. “Go on up,” he says, “there are things she wants you to try on.” Upstairs, a low din of sound comes from behind a studio door. This space is the place. Slowly, I open the door. A semi-circle of half-nude people stand inside; there is a woman in a satin pregnancy suit. Across the way, a dude in suspenders, bow-tie and ripped fabric stands at attention like an extra in Cabaret.
Others are stripped down to their underwear. “Are you the designer?” I ask one girl wearing some sort of bustier stretched tautly across her chest. “No, she’s over there,” she carefully points. “Sorry, I don’t want to fall out of this thing,” she says as she struggles to keep the thin fabric in place. Suddenly, I feel completely overdressed, as though I’m at a nudist camp. I’m embarrassed to be wearing so many clothes. Rather than a nudist colony, though, it’s like a special club for deconstructed knitwear fetishists. They’ve run out of knit costume pieces by the time I arrive. I begin to suspect that some overly-enthusiastic guests are wearing more than one. Yes. “They told me I took too many,” says a guy in boxer briefs as he hands me an erotic looking piece of ruffled pale pink ultrasuede with two strings on either end. I tie it around my thigh like a garter.
Dance music plays at a low volume on a boombox next to the beer. The space is brightly lit, uncomfortably so, but you just assume that a part of it. A part of what, exactly? No one seems to know what is meant to happen. Are we what’s happening? Are we being videotaped? Is my future political career in jeopardy? The chaps man, our mustachioed host j. morrison, comes in and walks over to a previously ignored piece of plywood stacked against the wall and moves it aside. “Oooohhh,” people murmur as a curtained indoor window is revealed. He turns out the lights and we see that there’s a light on in the room on the other side of the window. The room turns silent.
The curtain opens to reveal a nearly-nude woman, her face concealed by some sort of netting. She is neither fat nor thin, a mostly rectangular torso of flesh impressed with mesh. She struggles a bit with the bodysuit, pulling it up over her head, stretching it out with her arms as though she is a model demonstrating different ways to wear the look.
She’s dancing to music we assume is there, but cannot hear. No one says a word, but no one seems shocked, either, and a few people start snapping photos. A free peep show turns into a free-for-all, but in a way we’re all on a level playing field due to our our various states of undress. She closes the curtain and the scenario repeats itself several more times. Eventually viewers close in on the window, and begin attempts at interaction. They mirror her movements, they try talking to her, they start talking amongst themselves. Some people sit down on the perimeter of the space, perhaps bored. At the start, we were looking for the main course, but now every course being served is dessert, though it is far from sweet. The most radical act of the evening comes afterwards, when the performance artist comes into the space fully dressed to face her voyeurs. Her name is Maria Petschnig.
all photos by Renata Espinosa
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