Diller + Scofidio
(New York City, New York, Established 1979)Elizabeth Diller
American, born Poland (Lodz, Poland, 1954)Ricardo Scofidio
American (New York City, New York, 1935)Soft Sell
In the original installation of Soft Sell, a large pair of scarlet female lips was temporarily projected onto the glass doors of the Rialto, an abandoned porn theater on New York's Forty-second Street. A sensuous female voice emanated from the speak-hole of the ticket booth, soliciting passersby with dubious offers of bodies, real estate, and a wide range of consumerist pleasures. Each pitch began with her saying, "Hey, you, wanna buy a..."
Presented during the "Disneyfication" of Times Square in the 1990s — a period when activities shifted from drug dealing and prostitution to family-oriented theater and entertainment — Soft Sell suggests that the commodification of sexual desire wa merely being replaced with a new set of seductions designed to appeal to our consumerist fantasies.
Keywords
faces, lips, lipstick, women, noses, performance, propositions
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