by Leigh Witchel
Like its inspiration, Carrie Ahern’s “Sex Status 2.0” is more about status than sex. Ahern, who has been making work since 2005, pretty much nails describing herself in her own bio: “She has a reputation for extensive research combined with an ability to make viewers deeply uncomfortable and comfortable simultaneously.”
Her “Borrowed Prey” project unfolded over five years, during which time she learned how to hunt, butcher and slaughter animals. “Sex Status 2.0” is the current project. It’s been in the works for two years now, and was gestated in a study of Simone de Beauvoir’s landmark 1949 tract, “The Second Sex.”
Ahern’s performance was closer to a soirée or salon: it took place on the ground floor of a Park Slope brownstone in front of an audience of under 20. The cast, all women, entered in simple attire: white shirts, different pants or shorts, looking like waitresses or menial workers. To taped music, piano scales and a singer humming along, they rubbed against the space itself; half like a dog marking, half like a maid cleaning.
Blue and red fluorescent lights placed about the room snapped on and the cast started talking, not to us, but to themselves about the effort of trying to finish different tasks: reach something, itch something. All the women were working but independently, but they formed a hivemind in their murmurs: “getting really into the crevices,” “hard to get it clean.” “Don’t stop. Go, go, go.” Was it hard work, or OCD?
There was dance in “Sex Status 2.0,” but there was more physical theater, both because of the subject matter and the space limitations. This was a small space and with seven dancers it was full. The up-close-and-personal performance had a strange but clinical intimacy: interacting with the audience but at the same time avoiding confrontation – uncomfortable and comfortable once again. If there wasn’t a fourth wall, perhaps it was a veil.
Ahern spoke to us: “Time for a survey.” While Carolyn Hall recorded answers on a clipboard, Ahern asked a series of multiple choice questions that alternated between cleaning and sex with dry humor. “Do you need validation for cleaning?” “Do you need it for sex?”
The second question was about your favorite position. Show of hands, please. Then a preference for kissing or oral sex. Sex with strangers or someone you know? Funny how the older you get, the less threatening those questions are. Ahern promised an analysis of the data via email, and it arrived a bit over a week later. “Cleaning seems to be more of a hot button issue for this group than sex.”
After, each of the women came over to an audience member one at a time and started making eyes at them. They passed one another smiling, lay down, kneeled and posed. They posed in groups, embracing; decorative drapey poses like Dovima in a 50’s glamour shot or an Art Deco Mucha poster. Curves, leisure and an imaginary cigarette.
Ahern came over to me and asked me to participate in “one of her favorite touches.” She got on all fours and rubbed her cheek on the back of my hand. It felt good. And it was very uncomfortable. Hall came over and asked if I would hold her hand – the performers always secured consent first. These innocuous things took on a pungency. Who was touching whom? Sitting there, impassive as someone touched you, even non-sexually, felt like being a john.
The performers continued, and touch turned into play then play-fighting, then into embrace. They walked, posed, stretched, then started to unbutton shirts, tops got unbuttoned to reveal undergarments and hair got uncinched.
Frayed edges showed through the placidity. One woman walked to a wall and started shouting – to it, not to us, “I’m HERE. I’M RIGHT HERE.” And the cast’s shorts came off, peeling down to underwear. Some of the performers laughed, two others had a staring contest. Another woman tried to make those two laugh by whispering to them, and almost succeeded.
The lights dimmed, the cast dressed and regrouped with four standing and others lying down, going from that to knees up and legs spread. As the room got darker, the dancers took off their shirts, replaced them backwards, took off their shorts, and reassembled in a starburst. And lights went out, in a diminuendo ending.
“Sex Status 2.0” felt somewhere between a mood piece and a thesis, but it’s the brainy, talky sections of Ahern’s work that are the best. You don’t go to watch dancing. She’s been thinking about the subject at hand for months or years, and you go to think with her.
Gender and feminine roles are perfect subjects for Ahern’s comfortable discomfort. All of her work is provoking without being aggressive. And as De Beauvoir noted, that’s exactly what women are socialized to do.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Sex Status 2.0” – Carrie Ahern
October 16, 2019
Cover: Carrie Ahern in rehearsal for “Sex Status 2.0.” Photograph © Nina Westervelt.
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