The plot, the pen and I are now in Vienna getting ready for Sunday’s kleine Ausstellung (more on that tomorrow) and the grand finale to the novel.
Last time I was in Vienna, the European Month of Photography was just opening and now it is drawing to a close. I still have time to see plenty of exhibitions over the next week and I wasted no time in getting started this afternoon. After dumping my bags, I zipped straight over to the Wien Museum to see Sex in Wien: Lust. Kontrolle. Ungehorsam (Sex in Vienna: desire, control and disobedience). For some reason, I thought it was going to be a photography exhibition and it is in part, but it is so much more than just photographs. There are posters, films, snippets of notes, adverts, Nazi propoganda, sex toys, snap-ons, add-ons, newspapers, sketches, paintings, photo-albums, books, magazines and, my particular favourite, a chair in the form of a stiletto heeled shoe – it has to be the season’s “must have” and I want one. And the Fräuleins are definitely doing a lot more than waltzing …
The exhibition is a real romp around Vienna through the ages from the literature of Schnitzler to the sex industry as it is today. The show deals with sex in its every shape, form and permutation, as well as pre-sex, post-sex and consequences (not always good). It oscillates between amusing and disturbing; historical and hysterical. There is sex for love, sex for sale and sex for fun.
One particular highlight is the vivid photography of the wonderful Klaus Pichler. Various groupings of vibrantly coloured images showing aspects of the current day sex industry – inside and out of exotic shops, saunas, peepshows, bars, etc. It is a stimulating (as in thought-provoking …) mix of over-the-top, leopard print, reds and pinks eloquently juxtaposed with other images that imply rather more sleaze than romance. Here’s hoping Klaus will be producing a book of these at sometime in the future.
There is a wonderful book of the show, containing essays that address some of the issues represented by the exhibits and leave no taboo stone unturned. If you’re in Vienna before the 22nd January, don’t pass up the opportunity of seeing this exhibition, which delights, entertains and shocks.
Meanwhile, on the novelling front, I have penned a few more words today for upload tomorrow, but not as many as I’d hoped. Thinking I had a good plane ride, which I normally find inspirational, to bash out at least a couple of thousand words, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we landed. I think this novelling is taking its toll … but still good fun! And if I need a sex scene, I have more than enough material – starting with these … um … interesting garden gnomes …
In the arms of waltzing frauleins from the Stationary Traveller by Camel
