The ritual performance „Oratorical shorts“ (התחתון המדבר) was first presented in 2010 at the Flee Market Dizengoff in the center of Tel-Aviv, Israel. Janina Akhmetova put her carrier with artefacts near the other counters, selling old objects.

Janina Akhmetova collected the phrases that stroke and traumatized her girlfriends. She wrote this “pulsating words” (as one of the respondent described them) with the marker on male underwear and hanged them to sell.

Among those quotations were:

- I am a dj, baby

- Call me motek

- Beg me to fuck you

- Just on you hips, let me do it on your hips

- It is not real.

 

Since these phrases were quite ambiguous, Janina Akhmetova would explain the interested “buyers/watchers” the story behind them. For instance, “To come on the hips” connected to the religious jew, who, by the Galakha regulations, wasn’t allowed to properly touch the woman. So for him it was the way to lessen the sin of coitus with non-jew.

It was also possible to write new quotations on the blank underwear. As well as male stories on female panties. Which was ritualistic part of the installation.

Unfortunately, there is no documentation of this first installation.

The next edition was presented in 2016 during “Kolisionen” Programm in Ufer Studios, Berlin. According to Seminar rules, the artist was given so called “objections” – new conditions to reinvent the project. In “Oratorical Shorts” case they were to perform in Turkish Döner shop, to present the male point of you and to cover the gender of the performer.

Janina Akhmetova used this opportunity to try out her idea of “a choir of pants”.

This edition unlike the one performed on the flee market was considered to be an intervention.

 

Further editions are supposed to be held in the galleries, as well as other flee markets in different genres and formes. The objects are on sale.