NEW YORK - Former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren is bringing porn back to Times Square with a video art installation now showing on MTV's giant screen across from the network studios on Broadway and 44th Street.
"I've cut up pieces of old stag movies, slowed them way down, and set them to music," McLaren told the New York Daily News. "What you see is not people having sex but people about to have it. The old movies had a lot more foreplay. I was interested in the body language of nonactors, how they communicated their longing."
Presented by Creative Time, McLaren's installation is titled "Shallow" and runs through Aug. 14. Pedestrians can call a number displayed on the video screen to listen to the music.
McLaren's exhibition pretends to celebrate the sleazoid culture of the once-dangerous Deuce, but the precious, ironic exhibit seems more akin to the annoying "poetry" that began to appear on the marquees of shuttered Times Square movie theaters in the '90s.
"Hundreds of people would walk down the street thinking about sex," McLaren said. "Now the outlawed culture will live on."
Not quite. The MTV-approved videos include no explicit sex or nudity. According to the Daily News report, one of the artsy clips features a "woman descending a staircase a la Marcel DuChamp."
"She's wearing a garter belt and a mink," McLaren told the tabloid. "She's going to an orgy, but you don't see where she's going. It's set to a mash-up of the Captain and Tennille's 'Love Will Keep Us Together' and Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart.'"
The term "mash-up" should be stricken from the English language along with such buzzwords as "reboot" and "unplugged." But then, what would one expect from the man who attempted to market the New York Dolls as Communists and made punk the province of Brit fashion boutiques?
The Great Rock N Roll Swindle continues...
