Featherweight Champions
Operation Pillowfight toys with issues of exploitation and sexuality, but discovers that downtown glamour and high-cleavage horseplay are much less of a downer.


What: Operation Pillowfight
Location: Greene Street Gallery, New York
Date: October 14, 2006
Cost: Free
Bohemian Factor: Some high-salaried hipsters
Geek Factor: Absolutely zero, sadly

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Ah, what is the threshold at which art becomes commerce?

An Andy-Warhol-ish question with a very practical answer. (That's right, Dave Hickey -the highly esoteric art-and-pop culture historian -won't be staying up all night pondering the answer to this one) I think one possible answer may be when the posse of popular snark site gawker shows up.

Upon hearing that a staged pillow fight would be taking place in conjunction with an art gallery opening event at the Greene Street Gallery, I knew I had to be there. Envisioning the kind of scrappy whimsical populism that NewMindSpace traffics in, I headed to SoHo...I found myself surrounded by an exhibit featuring adolescent girls with preternaturally large breasts fighting and/or fondling one another with pillows.

Inspired by online pornography, the exhibit– like so many ventures-promises to demonstrate the commodification of sexuality. Hmm, if he's that concerned for the image of women in society, I'm not sure that he wouldn't be better off volunteering for NOW? Or an organization like this one? There seemed to be a fairly literal but vague obsession with menstrual blood, and a rather unapologetic reinforcement of the "Scantily clad chicks duking it out is HOT" motif. Given the violent allusions in some of the art on display, the relatively benign and goofy sight of art models, strategically garbed in loose pajamas meant to slip off for some serious boobage – which took place instantaneously – whapping one another all the while giggling, only brought attention to what was missing from the crowd's curious expectations: malice, either feigned or authentic. There was neither blood nor feathers drawn, and several individuals in the crowd- friends of the artist, I now suspect- willingly dove into the fray. I could just feel one of the many well-groomed post-collegiate guys bemoaning the opportunity to growl, "Rrrrarrrrr!!" they way they do when excitedly expecting a catfight for their viewing pleasure.

"It would be cooler if they were like jello-wrestling or something," opined a youngish guy behind me. Cooler, indeed, and more to the point: female on female violence is sadly perceived as erotic in this society, so why disguise where this was all heading with cuddly cushions and silk pajamas? A rather unfair judgment, perhaps, and I do suspect this pillow fight idea attracted a lot of very beautiful, very trendy looking people who wouldn't have shown up at a dive for your standard brawl in Berry Blue; and, in a City where buzz is more valuable than Google stock – I suspect that the artist might be asked to do more of this sort of thing.