SIREN STROLL • When world-renowned sex-positive performance artist Sadie Lune asked me to make her a mermaid-ghost-whore costume for her performance piece at the Trans-Modern Festival at the Baltimore Museum of Art, I was immediately on board. I constructed her costume utilizing all recycled items, deconstructing vintage lingerie and weaving discarded items and trash into the finished garment.
"Siren Stroll will conjure the ghost’s of the sex workers of Baltimore’s distant and recent past in an interactive ritual streetwalk. The procession-of-one will explore the mythologies vs. realities of prostitution, while honoring the history of Baltimore’s sex workers and bringing visibility to continuing violence against sex workers. While tourists pay to hear about the ghosts of prostitutes that haunt Fell’s Point from days of yore, women and other workers are still dieing trying to make a living in Baltimore; in 2008, five women who worked as prostitutes were brutally killed. As sex workers are often depicted as sirens, calling men to their doom, as well as people who live between worlds of legality, class, and desire/repulsion, I will personify a ghostlike mermaid appointed with items symbolic of the power, skills, and vulnerability of sex workers. Using repetitive actions and verbalizations, I will actively solicit donations for my roving altar to the dead sex workers of Baltimore, especially those fallen in the line of duty." --Sadie Lune
