*“Dick For Sale”
A bathroom installation by Ty Marshal
Future Tenant: a space for art
819 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222
July 17th - September 4th *
Info@futuretenant.org
Craigslist first started as an email list for events in San Francisco in 1995 by Craig Newmark. Every month, Craigslist gets more than 20 billion page views from over 50 million users in the United States alone.
Although sex is solicited in many places both online and off, the “Personals” section on Craigslist is a major U.S. hub that has grown by leaps and bounds in the 15 years of the websites existence - offering to do for casual sex what the rest of the site does for apartment searches, jobs or free items. Like bathhouses or sex clubs, the personal section on Craigslist caters to the erotic underbelly of society, the lonely, and those seeking anonymous sexual encounters. Oftentimes, males post pictures of their penises in the personal ads resulting in a venerable jungle of penis
that covers all 50 states, and outlying U.S. territories.
Prior to the Internet and Craigslist, individuals would post personal ads in newspapers, apply for a dating service, visit sex parlors or scratch their phone number in bathroom stalls to achieve their desired effect. Today, one simply has to post a personal ad on Craigslist to achieve the desired effect.
*In “Dick For Sale” Ty Marshal explores the phenomenon of individuals posting “dick pics” on Craigslist as an attempt to attract a “date”, “casual encounter”, or “anonymous rendezvous”, despite the websites supposed claim that pornographic pictures are not allowed. In more relevant terms, the free advertisement and marketing of one’s penis on craigslist is utilized as a means to an end. With the recent resignation of New York's Republican Congressman Christopher Lee, for posting a shirtless picture of himself via Craigslist - this phenomenon begs to come out of the nation's closet.
Exploring the use of the penis as a commodity (a good for which there is a demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market), “Dick for Sale” also looks at the fungibility of the craigslist penis – that is the commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. The word “Fungibility” comes from the Latin fungibilis from
fungi, meaning, “to perform”. **
The installation includes posts from the “casual encounters” section of Craigslist from each of the 50 states (including U.S. territories) posted on the walls of Future Tenant's bathroom, displayed alongside 50 moulds of the artist’s penis, installed to reflect mounds of growing mushrooms. “Dick for Sale” will be on display from July 17th – September 4th in the bathroom of
Future Tenant, 819 Penn Avenue Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222*
Ty Marshal is an inter-disciplinarian concerned with social activism, public space, semiotics and theater. His artwork takes a critical view of social, political, historical and cultural issues through visual commentary on human nature.
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