CHEAP: Cheap People Are Other People

Since moving to Berlin 20 years ago, artist, author and performer Vaginal Davis has been a member of the art collective CHEAP. In their work, the group explores questions of uniqueness and authenticity. Their film Cheap People Are Other People (2020) attempts to rethink the relationships between model and copy, past and present, one body and the next, through samples and repetitions.

Since July, one episode of the film Cheap People Are Other People has been shown monthly in the cinema of Gropius Bau. After a short introduction by Marc Siegel, the last three chapters of Cheap People Are Other People will be screened this evening. Ms. Davis herself is very familiar with the Arsenal archive: from 2007 to 2018, she presented finds of this archive in her series Rising Stars, Falling Stars. 

 

The art collective CHEAP was founded in Berlin in 2001. Their work includes performances, videos, festivals, concerts, installations and radio shows. In any format, their practice combines theory and pleasure, politics and whimsy, aesthetics and sex. 

Marc Siegel is Professor of Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His research and publications focus on experimental film and queer studies. He is the editor of Jack Smith: What's Underground About Marshmallows? und andere Texte which will be published by Alexander Verlag this November. He is a member of the Association of Palestinian and Jewish Academics and the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP.