vienna

MARIAHILFER STRASSE
This is a very busy shopping street, especially during the sales period.
People are rushing up and down, hunting for bargains. We start our walk in a
shopping centre:
A young woman is staring at us. She has her arms behind her head. Her blonde
hair is cut to the length of her chin and is slightly dishevelled. She is naked and
is standing close to the show window, inside a boutique for young fashion. Her
breasts are covered with a yellow poster saying “-50% SALE”. Two white bird’s
wings cover her pudendum. On her left are two female mannequins without
heads. One of them has the same yellow poster saying “-30%”, while the breasts
of the other are covered with “-50%”. Both of them don the white bird’s wings.
It is not 1937 and we are not in the surrealist exhibition of mannequins,
although these mannequins would have fitted into it quite perfectly. 301 It is not
Man Ray, Max Ernst or Salvador Dali who created these exhibits. The surrealist
movement is long past, and we are not in a museum that has recreated these
exhibits for a retrospective show of the surrealists’ work. This is real. Man Ray
documented in photographs what the surrealists did with the nineteen mannequins
that were abducted from the show windows of department stores. 302 We
stand in front of a show window and wonder how the mannequins had managed
to escape from an orgy in an art gallery. Placing the white bird’s wings on their
pudenda is a surprisingly creative act of dressing the mannequins for the seasonal
sale. The wings, like those of a baroque angel, are not attached to the back but to
the genitals. Or are they not attached to anything and can fly away whenever
they want, like birds startled by something that has escaped our notice? One bird
leads while the others follow. 303 We will be left with the unprotected nakedness
of the mannequins, caught in a Dionysian orgy of obscenity. Nakedness is the
prerogative of the innocent, of children and the primitive. In our culture, we
may only play a frivolous game with it. 304 And that’s what we do during the seasonal
sale, but surprisingly not very consciously. All these aspects are located in
301 Parrot (1982:153-157).
302 Ibid.
303 The seasonal sale is not regulated by laws today. A few shops in a shopping street start their sales, and then the others
simply follow suit. So, at least all the birds are in the sky.
304 Liessmann (2000:277).
Mariahilfer Straße
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