Ann-Sofie Öman on Barflies by George Chakravarthi

The three video screens that shows the artist George Chakravarthi in three different costumes, dressed up as three kind of women (barflies), sitting at a stool in three different bars, discloses experiences that of course not all of us know anything about. That far I find the installation interesting, although there is no sound to the videofilms.

I like especially the sequence where a young white man asks George Chakravarthi if he is a guy. It looks as if George Chakravarthi is showing how big his feet are in order to proof that he is a man. That is funny.

But the recordings of phone calls from a phone sex telephone line for gays and transvestites, which is the sound the visitors are offered to the video films, are not interesting at all. Horny men are horny men, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual or transsexual or whatever. And they moan in the same way, no matter what they are moaning at.

-Ann-Sofie Öman
Covering the City of Women festival for the Swedish magazine Danstidningen