Melanie Ebenhoch: Bluebeard’s Castle

Bluebeard and Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, meet on the porch to discuss women and their favorite weapons of choice. Beatriz Colomina and Paul Preciado walk through Villa Mueller, discussing how raumplan is just a witty way of transforming a building into binoculars of the male gaze, and how such singular patriarchal elements informed the current pharmacopornographic system of societal domination. Jane Mansfield woke up from a nightmare about Marylin Monroe. Fred Aster realized he was no longer sure why he had entered the room, and the ghost of high modernism finally understood that its heart beats for fascism. Melanie finds herself juxtaposed against the backdrop of a 1950s medieval dungeon, and who’s to say if she’s posing for a cheap romance book cover or actually getting closer to finding Norman Bates’ mother?! Impossible to say, at this point. 

The scene is too densely populated for all this to be simply just a series of random anecdotes. There are too many voices and the web of intersectional relationships is too complex. The suspense grows, and the cat has yet to enter the room. So wait for her, and let’s see what actually happens. And maybe, by the end of the day, someone turns on the light. Click. Here we go…