Blackmarket is an on-going, roving guerilla pop-up piece by Applied Mechanics. It debuted around the outskirts of the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival in 2015. Yellow-skirted concession-sellers hawk $1 cookies and crackers with bawdy bravado. They flock in groups of 3 – 4 and coo like pigeons. They are all named Bernadette.
Their clientele quickly learn that the cookie-and-cracker racket is a front for a black market operation which sells small, intimate performances.
For $1 – $5 tips, Bernadettes will pull you aside, coo secrets into your ear, and initiate you into their illicit world of intimate art. Among the intimate art acts: group dance, jungle sounds, ecstatic movement, and a silent film for one with a live score that may occasionally included a harpist.
For a larger fee, the Bernadettes offer a private initiation ritual. What happens in that initiation, only a Bernadette can know. But suffice to say, the Bernadettes are among you. For information and booking inquiries, please email appmechsinfo@gmail.com.
