My neighborhood in BsAs apparently used to be the red light district. I guess that means that catcalls are currently at a minimum in the area. But the remnants of the era are still there. All around Godoy Cruz, which is four blocks from my house, there are numerous albuerges transitorios, or rent-by-the-hour hotels. Which can be an incredibly useful thing if you’re 32, still living with your parents and trying to get in your coworker’s pants (which is basically just another way of saying you’re Argentine, or Chilean for that matter).
Anyways, the point is the area around Godoy Cruz is no longer the red light district and all of these albureges transitorios have been shut down or bought out by developers looking to put in high-rise apartments in gentrified Palermo. Basically at every hour, constructions projects are going on, getting started or finishing up.
Luckily, Buenos Aires does not let a cultural transition like this go to waste.
The cultural institutions of Buenos Aires decided to turn “former love hotel Pussy-Cats into a public art space” (and I got that straight from the brochure). Basically a construction company left one of these old hotels still standing and gave one room to an installation artist to decorate as they chose. The installation begins in a large warehouse room, where three walls are covered in artists’ canvases: one wall of photography, another of modern painting on canvas and the last was paintings on transparencies that were then layered on top of each other. Then (as directed by the people running the exhibition) you go up to the very top floor and wander down.
These rooms are so weird. Like really weird. One room was covered in photos of Marilyn Monroe and JFK and phrases like “he loves me, he loves me not” written in lipstick. There was a room where the bathtub was filled with dirt and a tree was bursting through the middle of my bed. There was a room playing childrens’ music with stickers of Disney princesses on the walls. Meanwhile, each bed was made with sheets and pillowcases that said “Pussycat hotel” with the logo emblazoned beneath.
The final room was the video art room. The seats available for watching the film were 8 beds on which you can recline and look up at the screens which were showing everything from silent comedic-murder mystery montages to a film explaining why you should pick up your dog’s poop when you take it for a walk, a lesson BsAs is still learning.
My favorite part by far though, was that after wandering through this absolutely stellar, grotesque and spectacular exhibition, you enter a the show room for what the rooms of this new high-rise apartment building will look like. In other words, you leave the dark twisting maze of corridors and rooms where techno music has been blasting and you enter the pristine, neatly arranged dining room exhibition with its finished wood floors and polished counters while the soothing sounds of elevator music spread across the room. Kind of makes you wish that the red light district was still there.