SUPER HAPPY LUCKY ITCH

Oh, yes. What a tease. Not a strip tease, not a hair tease, but a cock tease, as a lingering macho womb sits with aplomb in the room, pulling us in with its magnetic stare while keeping us out with a guarded lock. We just don’t measure up.

It is withholding the prize, the treasure. The treasure we will never see. And that’s because this is a show that celebrates the exclusivity behind sex and technology. Listen up: You’re not invited. That’s right. And that’s the secret behind Toronto-based Camilla Singh’s and Sherri Hay’s SUPER HAPPY LUCKY ITCH, a large-scale installation that can be best understood as a cross-cultural romp through sex and technology. Desire is whole-handedly hands-off.

But why does it have to be? The materials speak volumes. This hot and bothered piece not only glows, but moans at us. Seriously. The temperature is high in this installation of a thousand pink and red balloons. Centrestaged, they are wrapped in a giant grab-bag of sheer white linen that is more Victoria’s Secret than Fabricland. And the bouncing balls of helium tumble up against one another, poking poignantly into the lingerie like an overflow of cow nipples, but in a sweaty nightclub. This pleasure, however, goes beyond the eyes, since there are subtle sounds too. The looped clip that moans underneath is one of dire hunger—played backwards and slowed down to distinguish every bump, grind and groan—sampled from Singh’s cat in heat. No wonder it’s so hot in here.

But wait, there’s more. Deep within the core of this loot bag of pleasure is an upright, iron bird cage, one big enough to contain Edgar Allan Poe’s raven, but too small to encase a human. Inside the cage, we find a long, lanky tube of fluorescent lighting. It’s one that would give Dan Flavin a party in his pants, as it glows like a warm womb in a red-light district and, with the groaning sounds, sucks us in.

It is definitely turned on. Singh and Hay have created an anomalous sexual organ that refers to technology—though this duo didn’t rely on technology to build the installation. Yes, the pink and black walls were hand painted, and every balloon—of the thousands there are—was pumped and tied with tired fingers all the way through. But alas, just because we can see our way into this womblike organ still does not mean it wants to let us in, nor want to be in us.

Hands off. This exclusivity can be easily compared to the Berlinbased duo’s—Michael Elmgreen’s and Ingar Dragset’s —2005–06 piece, Social Mobility, an installation of broken stairs leading to an authoritative set of doors that are locked. Or even LA-based Liza Lou’s 2005 piece, Security Fence; an enclosed steel-wired cage with intricate rows of glass beads that glitter like diamonds, but with coiled barbed wire that looms atop, keeping us out. There’s no way in; like Singh’s and Hay’s piece, indicating it could be just as painful to be shut out as trapped in.

But isn’t SUPER HAPPY LUCKY ITCH supposed to be about the intersection of sex and technology and not, instead, locking us out and tossing away the key? Here the piece falls short of the clear distinction of what it is trying to say—other than the fact it wants to hide something from the audience. As a result, we have to make some sense of its sheer vagueness ourselves. Sex? Technology? Does that make it a sex machine?

Shyly, it does. The obvious route to cross-sect sex and technology would have been to ride up Highway 69 to a bordello or brothel riddled with Internet porn, webcam girls and PayPal lap dances that would shock and sleaze before satisfying the need to understand the technological codependence to which sexual desire has become akin. Screen off, keyboard clean and mouse out of hand, the piece alludes to digital interaction with sex, but in a way that shows our distance from it. Look but don’t touch. The seduction here is done quietly instead of readily available or packaged like a product to consume, say, after giving the 16 magic credit card numbers.

Here is the game it plays: it withholds desire, it is a tease we can never click our way into or purchase. It calls out to us and does not let us in and keeps us strung along, our loins forever afire. ■

Sherri Hay’s and Camilla Singh’s SUPER HAPPY LUCKY ITCH was exhibited at the Women’s Art Resource Centre Gallery in Toronto from September 16 to October 21, 2006.

Nadja Sayej is a Toronto journalist.