MEN’S BATHHOUSE

Video installation

1999

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TECHNICAL DETAILS

5-channel video installation (colour), sync. loop, 4:3 PAL, duration: four channels in an octagon – 8′ 29″, a separate channel with the “changing room” – 3′ 41″, audio tracks – 5’00” and 12’00”

 

‘Men’s Bath – video stills’, 42 x 33,38 cm, lambda on 3mm plexi-covered dibond, 1999/2015

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DEMO

 

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DESCRIPTION

The video installation “Men’s Bathhouse” consists of four simultaneous projections displayed on 105 x 140 cm screens mounted on an octagonal architectonic structure imitating the interior of a bathhouse. Thanks to the use of double-sided screens the projections are visible both inside and outside the construction. Footage visible on the screens was recorded with a hidden camera in the Gellért bathhouse in Budapest. The main protagonist of the project is Kozyra who invaded the men’s world in disguise – dressed as a man. Thanks to her disguise she could observe and spend time among the filmed man on equal footing. The fifth channel of the installation is a 3-minute film showing the makeup process – the artist becoming a man. The film is displayed on a monitor placed by the entrance to the octagon.

 

“Men’s bathhouse” was prepared for the 48^th Venice Biennial in 1999. The work was exhibited in the Polish pavilion curated by Anda Rottenberg, with Hanna Wróblewska as the curator of the exhibition. For “Men’s Bathhouse” Katarzyna Kozyra received an honourable mention – one of the highest distinctions ever received by a Polish artist at the Venice Biennial. The International Jury of the 48^th International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, which included: Zdenka Badovinac, Okwui Enwezor, Ida Gianelli, Yuko Hasegawa and Rosa Martinez, awarded Katarzyna Kozyra for exploring and challenging the authoritarian domain of the male territory, combining elements of performance art and stage production.

 

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Artur Żmijewski interviews Katarzyna Kozyra

 

Whose penis did you take a mold of?

A friend of mine. I knew he wouldn’t mind letting me use it to make the mold.

 

Silicon?

This one’s foam rubber actually. Light as a feather.

 

Is it as soft and flexible as it is in real life?

It is nice and soft, but it’s not flexible. It was comfortable to wear, I was confident it wouldn’t fall off. My only concern was that the real thing hangs loose while mine was just a motionless prop.

 

The pubes were yours though?

I had to shave off a patch the shape of the base of the cast. The make-up artist stuck it on, added a sort of toupee around the edges, brushed my short and curlies, and there I was with balls and a dick. I was a bit afraid that at closer inspection (and everybody knows how obsessed men are with checking length and thickness) someone would catch on that my penis was fake. The make-up artist changed its color three times, and it still looked like it had just been taken out of boiling water. Besides it was pretty big for me. I’m petite, so I thought I looked like a little boy with an exceptionally huge dong. It seemed to be on perpetual stanch-by, so to speak.

 

Did the men in the bathhouse try to pick you up?

Most of them didn’t really notice me. But there were some who looked for opportunities to sneak a peek at my crotch. I had to have it out in the open so there wouldn’t be any doubt I was a guy. I kept my evidently female ass covered. The penis and a scrotum were my passport into the male sanctum. A world of men: straight guys, queers, urinals…

 

Does everyone in there walk around naked?

That depends on the time of day, on their mood, on their age. They come to work up a sweat, soothe their sciatic aches, look between one another’s legs, pick up someone… Naked, in briefs, in special bathing smocks, whatever…

 

You went there with two assistants who used two hidden cameras to film the men who frequent that fairly posh establishment.

Yes, it’s a public bath located in a luxury hotel. When I went there for the first time, the stylist spent two hours doing my wig in a stuffy ladies room in the hall. The second time around, we rented a suite to use as a dressing room. I would walk out of there as a guest wearing a hotel bathrobe. And when you’re wearing one of those bathrobes you can go anywhere you like, the bellhops respect you. We felt like conspirators. Our luggage was in the suburban dorm where we were actually staying. In the bathhouse, the cameramen pretended they didn’t know me. The idea was to protect the film and the equipment in case I got caught. I was afraid of losing the camcorders and the recorded cassettes if they exposed me for an intruder.

 

Were you exposed?

Not at all! Not as a woman at least. If I was “recognized” at all, it was as someone else – as a gay. I was bugged by guys who kept cropping up beside me giving me lewd stares. One of them would look me straight in the eye, another circled me trying to check out what I had between my legs. Like I said, I’m really slim and petite, so my disproportionately large prick interested them. I felt uncomfortable, I didn’t quite know what was going on. When someone was looking at me I didn’t know whether it was because they liked me or because they could see the net holding my beard in place. Were they seducing or exposing m? I had bushy converging eyebrows, a towel stuck on to my tits, and I hadn’t shaved my legs for half a year.

 

A woman with hairy legs?

See for yourself.

 

Jesus Christ! Will you look at that; your calf is positively hirsute! Tell me, what was it like with a penis in a masculine world?

I felt awful because there was nowhere to hide, not even in my own body. After the experience in the women’s bathhouse when I attracted no interest as a woman among women, I thought it would be similar here, and that I wouldn’t arouse any interest as a guy among guys. But it was just the opposite! The thing that was supposed to protect me, my penis, made me get lustful or nosy looks. It was a perfectly normal bathhouse with mixed patrons: tourists, heterosexuals, homosexuals – you know, guys. My options were limited. I couldn’t take a shower or a steam bath because everything would have come off. All I could do was sit on a bench next to or facing one of the cameras. As a result I kept sitting next to this one guy. He was great by the way: good-looking, well-built, cool. That’s probably why I felt like a real twerp next to him. But since I kept sitting beside him, he could have thought I was making a pass at him. When I left that damn sweat-hole after forty minutes, he was standing in the lobby smiling and looking at me so hopefully! Was he waiting for me? That’s when I really felt guilty about misleading someone, about unintentionally having played with someone’s feelings.

 

How did you feel as a guy?

Sticking a cock on didn’t make me feel like a guy! I have no idea what it feels like being a guy. Being a woman I felt terribly ashamed among men. Even though I was disguised, I felt totally naked.

 

Did you spot anything interesting, did anything unusual happen?

Yes, well, I’m not tremendously popular as a woman; but as a guy I had three suitors in the course of thirty minutes. I never expected to attract such interest. I wanted to be transparent so I wore boxer shorts the first time around, and I became invisible as soon as I walked in. I sat there on the bench, relaxed and blending in with the surroundings. I calmly observed what was going on around me. I didn’t feel I was being watched; all the tension involved in preparing for the project vanished. Earlier, I had wondered whether I would be able to get past the gate in the first place, how soon it would be before they unmasked me and how they’d react: would they laugh, kick me out, make a scene, beat me up” I expected everything. But it turned out that nobody recognized me, that no one suspected anything, and that gave me a right to be there. That was a revelation and a triumph at the same time. So then I became bold enough to walk in wearing that ill-fitting ridiculous prop. Everything changed. Whereas before I felt like some sexless freak, I now acquired a gender. Nobody imagined I was a woman, but the men cast me as a gay with their hungry glances! And that came as a shock. They created a new character.

 

In 1997, in the same bath, you used a hidden camera to make a film about women. What led you to make a film about men now?

Why should only women be spied upon? In commercials, in porno mags, it’s all women. Why not see what men are like without their “protective layer”, their elegant facade; without all their status symbols, their designer suits, their cars – bareass in the baths. Women would be happy to see their slack blackened balls and their limp dicks. But is it really going to be a film about men?

 

How did you feel filming women as compared to men? What interested you most?

During the making of the first (women’s) bath project, I felt like a cowardly bastard with a camcorder hidden in a plastic bag, spying on everything, and taping it, too. I used them – those women. Except that I didn’t put them in sexy poses like they usually do, there was no veneer, I didn’t turn them into enticing objects; they remained themselves – none of them is coy, because there’s no point, there’s no one to see them. Women feel and act different in the presence of men. And I wanted to show women, not their artificial, public side. In the men’s bath the most interesting thing was that I was among men who didn’t know (or didn’t see). I was wearing a cap that made me invisible – how rewarding to make fools out of men. A woman “dresses up” as a man. And it works, even though everybody there observes everybody else. Nobody can tell she’s a woman. You know what I think? It’s a sauna for guys. So even the towel fell of my tits, they’d never even think there was someone of the opposite sex there with them: that the dude with the tits was a broad. Their conviction that I was a guy cloaked me better than any disguise.

Translated by Artur Zapałowski

 

IN A MEN’S BATHHOUSE – MEN, TWO CAMERAS, AND ONE WOMAN

Christopher Blase interviews Katarzyna Kozyra

 

In 1997 you used a hidden camera to film women in a public bath in Budapest, and then showed the material at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. This year you went to a – men’s – bath again, disguised as a man. What was it that originally led you to make a film about women in the bathhouse two years ago?

I wanted to show women as they really are, not touched up, not fake; I wanted to show what women’s bodies really look like, how they behave when they’re acting natural. And I succeeded because they didn’t know they were being filmed.

 

This leads us to the crucial point, since these are in a sense forbidden images. You’ve infringed upon people’s privacy which should be none of’ your business, you’ve collected real-life material to show it in an artistic situation. Didn’t your conscience ever bother you about that?

I did it in the name of what I thought was a good and right idea. I knew I wasn’t really hurting anyone. I’m not poking fun at anyone; to me, there’s no such thing as a defective body. Everybody is the way they are, while there’s this pressure on the part of the media for people to live up to some kind of stereotype. I was interested in how the raw material looks, that is, what people are really like.

 

And the result was a series of incredibly beautiful takes, scenes out of genre painting, the bodies very ample, very Rubensian…

Some of them were, but then there were Dureresque bodies as well. When I went there for the first time, without the camera. I couldn’t get rid of art history cliches, and I naturally saw everything in terms of painting: “God, that’s a Renoir, oh clear, that one over there’s doing something straight out of Degas”.

 

Did you find similar images from art history in the men’s bath?

No. Women look after their bodies more then men do after theirs. Somehow they spend more time drying themselves, and comb their hair all the time. They devote more time to themselves. They take their time toweling while men get it over with just like that.

 

That’s one difference.

…yes…

 

…the film about men is less encumbered by art…

…precisely…

 

…than the film about women is…

…that’s it; I was really interested how men behaved in the baths.

 

So it’s also…

…it’s really something else.

 

And it’s a question of private curiosity, of seeing how your experiences from the women’s bathhouse would compare with those from the men’s…

…I simply wanted to know what men did in the bath, whether they talk, read the paper – what they actually do there. But all the men did was simply look at others. They didn’t concentrate on themselves, but on others, they didn’t come there just to take a bath and wind down, they came there to watch. With the women it was all focused on the inside, while the men looked out.

 

You felt very sure of yourself in the women’s baths…

…not all that sure, after all I had the feeling that I was a voyeur spying on people from behind the bushes…

 

…but it was even worse in the men’s bath…

…yes, because there I felt I was being watched. The women didn’t even notice me but the men did; probably because I looked pretty unusual…

 

…even though you had a disguise that looked quite normal. You disguised yourself as a man…

…I cast myself as a man…

 

You cast yourself as a man: specifically, you stuck on a beard and a penis.

Yes, that’s right? So?

 

So the basic question is: did they get on to you?

No, strange, isn’t it?

 

How often did you get the feeling it would happen any moment now, that they’d expose you for what you were?

I don’t know, ten, fifteen times maybe, every time someone would stare at me. But on the other hand it was a good experience, you just had to stare right back. That made you feel a lot surer. But first you had to overcome something to be able to give as good as you got. The problem was that I could only be out in the open. I couldn’t take a shower, I couldn’t bathe, I couldn’t go to the sauna, I was afraid of going to the toilet. I could have gone to the toilet to lock myself in for a breather. But I didn’t know what I would have done if I noticed I was being followed by one of the guys who kept staring between my legs.

 

How many hours did you spend there as a man?

Not a lot, twenty minutes the first time and forty minutes the second time.

 

Two years ago, in the women’s bathhouse you did your own filming, but now the production process was a bit different.

On the production side I hired two cameramen who had been filming there with a hidden camera a couple of days before so I could see what it’s like and how I should behave. Then I decided more or less what I would be doing, where I’d be, and that we would have two cameras. I didn’t have a lot of freedom either, I had to stay close to the camera so that I’d be filmed if they saw through my disguise. Frankly speaking, I was curious what would happen if they got on to me. Because I was sort of invisible there. What would happen if I suddenly became visible, when they saw a stranger in their midst? On the one hand you’re interested what would happen if they blew your cover, but then you’d rather not go through with that. With hindsight, I’m rather happy I didn’t get caught, though actually it was obvious I was a woman.

 

What was your role in all of this? There were the two cameras directed at two benches, while you’re walking around…

…back and forth. I walk off one video screen I appear on the other. Like someone who’s there but doesn’t want to play the main part. Should viewers notice that the person walking isn’t really a man? Yes, definitely. Then again I had to blend in the background a bit so others wouldn’t recognize me; I must have looked like some kind of freak who doesn’t fit in but is there anyway. Sure, I’ve never been to a men’s bath before, you can also see it as a forbidden temple – I wander in, look around and look like some art connoisseur admiring a beautiful bathhouse, while being looked at himself, then gapes some more; gives the order to start filming, is filmed, and observed at that.

 

I certainly feel like indiscreet observation was at stake here. And then it’s also like being in a museum…

…hmm, a museum of men…

 

Weren’t you at all interested in architecture?

I was. It was gorgeous, like an art deco interior. Much nicer than the women’s baths. The women’s baths were more formal, everything was very simple, 1920s – 1930s in style, sparser, while the men’s baths are decorated all over with little angels and flowers. Someone really made an effort to create a beautiful environment for the bathers. In the women’s bathhouse it was the women themselves who were interesting.

 

So now you were a woman as a man in a men’s bathhouse…

…a woman as a man in a men’s bathhouse.., a woman as a man in a men’s bathhouse…

 

…and did you learn anything new?

It’s not a whole lot different from other situations when men are in company. They’re more relaxed, but not all that much. There’s a big difference in the way the women behave, less so for the men…

 

What do you mean that women behave differently?

In public, women try to show themselves in a better light. It’s something subconscious. They really avoid certain positions in public; they don’t stick their butts out, they’re more graceful on the whole. Men couldn’t care less. They scratch their ass and their balls in public too, there’s practically no difference.

Translated by Artur Zapałowski

 

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• An edited version of the video “Men’s Bathhouse” belongs to Jacek Markiewicz, the co-creator of the action and the film.
• The work belongs to the collection of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art (PP) and the Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb.
• In the realisation of the work, Kozyra has used a digital video camera for the first time.
• Kozyra appears as the man from the bathhouse also in “Cheerleader” from the series “In Art Dreams Come True”.

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SEE MORE

• “Katarzyna Kozyra, Casting”, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw 2010.
• “Katarzyna Kozyra”, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento 2004.
• Katarzyna Kozyra, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 2001.
• „Katarzyna Kozyra, The Men’s Bathhouse, 48. International Biennial of Visual Arts, Venice, Polish Pavilion”, published by Zachęta Gallery of Art, Warszawa 1999.

• WOMEN BATHHOUSE

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The Artist would like to thank all her collaborators and people who helped in the realisation of the project, in particular:

Veronika Baba, Agnieszka Dąbrowska, Andrzej Karaś, Marcin Kustra, Ryszard Lech, Jacek Markiewicz, Sylwek Łuczak

 

Production:

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw,

Ministry of Culture and National Heritage,

Polish Institute in Budapest.

 

The piece was created with the support of Kozyra’s mother, Alicja.