The Floating Bitch. avi. Hugo Palmar P/A 2011-2012.

I walk on the sand of Rodgers Beach with red high heels and a swimming costume.
I enter the water of the Caribbean.
I float adrift.
Rapture,
Another Caribbean.
Delirious Desert.

Recording of an action on the shore of Rodgers Beach next to the Lago refinery, Sint Nicolaas, Aruba. Collage of audiovisual files about the oil culture in Venezuela, from the El Tablazo refinery and the Creole Oil Company, downloaded from the web. Audio mix with a bolero performed by Felipe Pirela.

Among other things, this work refers to the use of the female body conceived as an object for the service and sexual satisfaction of the male workforce (legally or illegally) in zones of tolerance and prostitution near the oil exploitation and refining fields, a practice common to the oil culture, both in Venezuela and in the Caribbean, and different parts of the world where the oil industry operates. The first authorial test was made between 2011 and 2012.

This piece reflects on a particular reality that has changed in recent years due to the collapse of the oil industry in both Venezuela and Aruba, and on bureaucratic, sovereign, social, and historical forms derived from the control and legal or illegal exploitation of the bodies, whether local or migrant, that is an essential labor force in the sex, oil, construction, tourism and hospitality industries, especially in the Dutch Caribbean.

Keywords: intimacy, exploitation, precariousness, desire, dependency, melodrama, ominous.