{"id":5101,"date":"2026-02-09T10:52:52","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/?post_type=vitrine&#038;p=5101"},"modified":"2026-02-09T11:08:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T10:08:36","slug":"louis_gahide","status":"publish","type":"vitrine","link":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/vitrine\/louis_gahide\/","title":{"rendered":"On \u00ab Sexy Magico \u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What is playing but not visible in\u00a0<em>On \u2018<\/em><em>Sexy Magico<\/em><em>\u2019<\/em>\u00a0are ten scenes from\u00a0<em>Sexy Magico,<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>a 1963 Italian film that can be situated within Mondo cinema, a genre occupying a contested position in between documentary film and exploitation cinema \u2014 or rather: a genre performing documentary authority while staging spectacle. Relying on shock, taboo and nudity, the films extracted African cultural practices and distorted them for Western audiences.\u00a0<em>Sexy Magico<\/em>\u00a0openly markets its own exploitative appeal through the slogan \u201cShocking taboos\u2026 a film that will quicken the pulse and delight the senses!\u201d. The question that follows is unavoidable: who was meant to be entertained and shocked by these images, and under what conditions?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Rather than attempting a critical reinterpretation or reframing, Gahide questions whether he has the right to intervene in this material at all. The intended audience of Mondo cinema is one to which Gahide, as a white Western man, could belong, and is therefore implicated in. From within this position, the installation turns back on itself, asking who is allowed to watch, speak, and represent.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To intervene in the footage would be to claim ownership over it; to show it again would be to participate in the same cycle of extraction and appropriation that produced it. So ultimately, Gahide chose not to show the film at all, a gesture raising broader questions about found footage as a political practice. The screens turned away are not an attempt to erase the colonial images but rather an attempt to disrupt their consumption. Absence here becomes presence \u2014 a space in which responsibility is made visible.\u00a0<em>On \u2018<\/em><em>Sexy Magico<\/em><em>\u2019<\/em>\u00a0does not offer a moral resolution, instead unfolding as a starting point, a question passed forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5094,"template":"","exposition":[53,54],"class_list":["post-5101","vitrine","type-vitrine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","exposition-en18","exposition-54"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vitrine\/5101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vitrine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/vitrine"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"exposition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exposition?post=5101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}