Economy, sexuality, immigration and identity Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg in the Raval of Barcelona

The Raval was, for years, a neighbourhood of prostitution and exchange of bodies. A context that caught the attention of Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg. “We contacted 18 ‘chaperos’ to participate in the work. Of these, eleven confirmed their participation according to the conditions that we defined together in a previous contact. Their participation consisted of a certain number of hours of video recording realized in one apartment of the Barrio Chino, in Barcelona, during June 2003, which varied between 6 to 16 hours with each of them.” They were between 21 and 38 years old, and came from South America and Spain. Many of them discovered their sexual identity in parallel with their job as body workers. To preserve anonymity, the participants wore the mask with Mauricio’s or Walter’s face if they were interviewed by one or another one. The words VORACIDAD MÁXIMA [Maximum Voracity] painted on the asphalt of the street below the recording flat set up an association between the traffic of money, desire and human lives.