2003

Participatory project and interactive two-channel video installation with audio

Mirrors and Bed

Loop: 70’19” / Variable dimensions

Eleven young men, all illegal immigrants and sex workers from the city of Barcelona, ​​are filmed by two cameras placed between two parallel mirrors on either side of a double hotel bed. One at a time, they share a bed with one of the artists, both minimally dressed in the same way, which gives an intimate atmosphere to the conversations. Two latex masks molded from the artists' faces hide the gigolos' true identities throughout the interviews.

Parallel mirrors multiply the face and provoke similarity, attributing a unique visual identity to the interviewer and the interviewee, who differ only in terms of speech. In the opening image of the work, the eleven men are portrayed lying naked on the white letters of the words Voracidad Máxima painted on the asphalt, as if waiting to be chosen by the public, taken from an electronic sexual menu, from which their stories can be heard.

Commissioned by MACBA, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, ​​Dias & Riedweg were inspired by Jean Genet's novel Journal d'un Voleur, written in the Gothic Quarter, where the museum is also located. The video explores the relationship between sexuality and the economy, with a focus on gay male workers. It portrays the urgencies of sex workers and their clients, relating financial needs with the subjective individual needs of both groups in a non-moralistic, rather theatrical and almost therapeutic way.