Half-price sale on lipstick and blowjobs.

I was impressed with art collective Superamas’ presentation of BIG Episode #2 (Show/Business) as part of Out There 18 at the Walker. When I left the show I kept thinking of the phrase Walker Performing Arts curator, Philip Bither, used during the artist discussion: surface glamour.

Superamas, a French-Austrian collective, struck me as pretty shifty – they refuse to reveal their names or claim authorship – and the performance seemed pretty shifty, too. It’s most fundamental components are two skits: two friends and an airline attendant in a beauty products shop, and a Superamas rep trying to pitch the group to a Rolls Royce exec. Each skit, with pre-recorded vocals, is played over for the audience several times, but with each iteration there is a slight change to the narrative, along with added intersplicing of film clips and dialogues. (And a couple dance numbers to WHAM!’s immortal hit, “Wake me up before you go-go.”) These changes are where it starts to get shifty. Each new layer brings a new perception, but now that I think back on it, were they adding layers to the skits or actually removing them to get at some greater truth?

While I thought the work did really well with the surface glamour and these objects of American pop culture that are destined to be devoured by consumers (make-up, cars, etc.), what I thought was even more interesting was the idea of human beings as commodities themselves; something to be consumed. In particular I noticed it with the sole female participant. In the first skit, she offers to model underwear for the two male friends, even soliciting their opinion on what she should wear. (See-through, tight, sexy, and kinky was their reply over and over again.) In the second skit, she appears as a secondary character that catches the eye of the Rolls Royce exec, and in one iteration she seems to be effectively handed over to the exec for an onstage blowjob that will benefit Superamas in some way. That was a pretty freaky component for me – even more so than the 45 seconds of simulated gunfire that bisected the piece (during which I jumped several inches out of my seat).

In a brief artist discussion after the work, Superamas touched on issues of pop culture in Europe and America. One of the collective had a sincere fondness for dropping the f-bomb many, many times during the conversation, much to the chagrin of his fellow performers. Another member was very calm, quiet and reserved until an audience member asked about the sound and visual effects, at which point the guy nearly fell out of his seat in his excitement to talk tech. Geeks are so cute.