With its mirrors, red velvet and soft light, the stage on which Viennese artists parade has nothing in common. They have been performing for a few weeks in a peep show left vacant by sex workers due to the coronavirus. Deprived of concert halls and frustrated to offer their services only on the internet, the singers rediscover contact with the public thanks to the nine individual booths where one can usually see, after having slipped a few coins into the slot, a pornographic show through a window.
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This ephemeral festival found its audience. Wednesday evening, 150 people were waiting with beer in hand to be able to enter small establishments in the establishment lined with posters of naked women in lascivious postures. "We ourselves were surprised by the positive reaction from the artists and the public," Stefan Strahammer, one of the organizers, told AFP. "At the beginning, the owner of the peep-show did not take us seriously but, very quickly, he was enthusiastic and lent us his premises for free" from the center of Vienna.
In order to comply with sanitary standards, only eighteen people are authorized to divide themselves into the cabins every quarter of an hour for three or four songs. They give the amount of money they want. "It makes me funny to go to a peep show, it's the first time" , slides into the queue a forties, Annelise Seidl. Her friend Andrea Schuh "thinks it's a great idea, very innovative" . "I want to be there because right now, sex workers are not allowed to practice," she says.
At the beginning, the owner of the peep-show did not take us seriously but, very quickly, he was enthusiastic and lent us his premises for free
Stefan Strahammer, one of the organizers of the festival.Voodoo Jürgens, one of the big names in Viennese song, was one of the last to perform that evening. Installed on a rotating circular platform in disco costume facing the cabins, it will give 20% of its cachet to two associations supporting prostitutes in Austria.
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Prostitution is legal in this central European country and brothels, many in the capital, were closed in mid-March by the government, like bars and restaurants, to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. They do not yet have the right to reopen and the precariousness of sex workers has worsened. "They are more and more relegated to the periphery and this project is a good way to put them back in the light" , explains the singer to AFP, wearing rabbit ears, before starting his show ...
