CHEAP: Cheap People Are Other People / Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures

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 1–5 (2020) attempts to rethink the relationships between model and copy, past and present, one body and the next, through samples and repetitions. On the occasion of Spätschicht x Creamcake, we are showing the second chapter of Cheap People Are Other People, followed by Jack Smith’s 16mm film Flaming Creatures. Flaming Creatures was released in early 1963, introducing a new concept of cinema glamour, and was banned in large parts of the United States just one year later due to its depiction of sexual content.

Since July, one episode of the film Cheap People Are Other People will be shown monthly in the cinema of Gropius Bau, in combination with a film from the Arsenal archive which Ms. Davis is very familiar with: 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.