Jesse is a fifteen year old woman/child, the sister of a friend of
artist Vanessa Beecroft. The artist dressed Jesse in a bikini thong and
silver boots and asked her to walk across the room in front of a video
camera. Jesse walked across the room, walked back, sat down and sprawled
on the floor in front of the camera for the next twenty minutes. In the
video and video stills, Jesse's body is the meeting point of conflicting
events and desires. It is the moment when puberty overlaps with
sexuality, the cusp of socially acceptable voyeurism. Jesse appears
listless, bored almost, and at the same time sexually poised.

Kate Moss started modeling at the same age, and has maintained the image
of the woman/child well into her mid-twenties. Her name and face are
nearly synonymous with the "waif" look. In fashion spreads by Corinne
Day for the Face and Mario Sorrenti for Calvin Klein during the early
nineties, Moss articulated the gestures and poses of the
woman/child–lying naked (or nearly) face down on a torn couch; her back
to the camera, looking over the shoulder, expression blank. Moss's
success as a supermodel cannot be attributed to exagerrated proportions
(Claudia Schiffer), exoticism (Tina Chow, Naomi Campbell) or lack
thereof (Cindy Crawford). It lies instead in the evocation of that
particular moment in sexual evolution–the sexing of the child–and the
prolongation of that moment in fashion photography.

Like Day and Sorrenti, Beecroft recognizes the significance of this
state. In works which are presented as both performances and videos,
Beecroft dresses (or undresses) girls ages 15-25 and places them in the
gallery or museum space as living scuplture. Her choice of clothing is
specific, minimal and identical. For the ICA in London she dressed four
models in black tops and nothing else. Her instructions are simple:
don't look at the camera and don't interact. The models move aimlessly
in the space, they appear completely preoccupied, unaware of one other,
the audience or the camera. In this way Beecroft engages several
adolescent activities: hanging around and posing, detachment and
self-involvement.

The transfer of Beecroft's videos and stills from gallery to web has not
changed the design or presentation of the work significantly. Four of
these performances–at the ICA in London, Deitch Projects in New York,
Site Santa Fe, and at Le Nouveau Mus