CHEAP: Cheap People Are Other People / Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures

Since moving to Berlin 20 years ago, the artist, author, and performer Vaginal Davis has been part of the art collective CHEAP. In their work, the artist group explores questions of uniqueness and authenticity.


Their film Cheap People Are Other People 1–5 (2020) attempts to rethink the relationships between model and copy, past and present, one body and the next through sampling and repetition.


On the occasion of Spätschicht x Creamcake, the Gropius Bau will show the second chapter of Cheap People Are Other People, followed by the 16mm film Flaming Creatures by Jack Smith.
Released in early 1963, Flaming Creatures pioneered a new concept of cinematic glamour and was banned in much of the United States just a year later due to its depiction of sexual content.


Since July, a monthly chapter of Cheap People Are Other People has been shown at the Gropius Bau cinema, paired with a film from the Arsenal archive, which Miss Davis is very familiar with. From 2007 to 2018, she presented finds from this archive in her event series Rising Stars, Falling Stars.


The art collective CHEAP was founded in Berlin in 2001. Their work encompasses performances, videos, festivals, concerts, installations, and radio broadcasts. In each project, their practice combines theory and pleasure, politics and quirkiness, aesthetics and sex.