This interaction made on a now dismantled site-specific sculpture within The Chelsea Piers (which caused controversy when first erected, due to its suggestive shapes) aims to reactivate the history of this particular space as a site of queer memory and resistance by erotically engaging with these objects from the present. I also take into consideration the ideas on toxicity and queerness posed by Mel Chen in Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections (2011).
Licking this phallic sculpture became a task with multiple purposes. First, the physical interactions with different structures within the city as a way to leave a trace and as the means to engage in a transactional task. Secondly, it becomes a symbolic gesture of defamiliarizing the present context by unearthing an erased past. This is relating to the location as a site for queer cruising in the past, now being turned into a gentrified commercial and living space.
Lead (Chelsea Piers), 2017
Video
01 minute, 07 seconds
Kevin Quiles Bonilla 