VIENNA, Austria — The world laughs when porn claims to be art, but let an artist install one-way glass looking into a ladies' bathroom, and voilà, it's art. Sounds unlikely, but that's just what an Austrian artist named Alexander Riegler is claiming about the "art project" he installed in a Vienna cafe named Dots that lets men "peek from their restroom into the ladies room," according to the Associated Press.
"[Riegler] told the daily Heute newspaper Monday that the mirror is an attempt to 'stir people into a discussion of voyeurism and surveillance,' in an era when almost everyone is being watched," added the AP.
Riegler obviously thinks he's pushing the envelope on this one, but he's really just skimming the surface. The one-way mirror not only doesn't look into the stalls, but "only shows women at the sink and does not offend anyone's private sphere," according to a cafe employee. That's more likely to elicit yawns than stir discussion. Heck, it isn't even that original.
Fact is, if someone from our biz was curating this "exhibit," not only would the one-way mirror show everything, but there would be individual "toilet cams" in each stall with monitors throughout the cafe allowing diners to get a peek at the entire process. That's just how we roll.
In the effete art world, however, pushing boundaries means tiptoeing up to something potentially scandalous, tapping it tentatively on the shoulder and then running away when it turns around.
Of course, gender politics always intrude in the real world, and they have here, too. In January, the tables will be turned, so to speak, when the one-way glass is "reversed to let [women] look at men's faces while they stand at the urinal."
Only their faces? No tactile interaction? Hmph. Add a glory hole and we just might consider it art.
Image, courtesy of Kurier.
