Polish Artist Karol Radziszewski Talks Men Out Of Their Clothes In “Backstage”

We thought the producers of all those broke-straight-dude sites had a real way with getting hetero dudes to take their clothes off. But Polish artist/filmmaker Karol Radziszewski puts them to shame with his 2011 project, Backstage, in which he prodded guys who showed up for a screen test to take off their clothes.

During each casting session, Radziszewski questions his subject about shame, exhibitionism and voyeurism—the concept behind getting them to strip down was to explore the difference between being nude (arty, tasteful) and being naked (whorish, embarrassing).

"The volunteers were unaware, though, that the project was limited to the very screen tests," writes a poster on Just a Dream. "During [the] interviews he tried to manipulate guys and asked each of them to strip. Few of them refused to take off underwear, but few of them had no problem with nudity."

Apparently openly gay Radziszewski caused quite a stir in Poland when the film surfaced: The models weren't clued in to the nature of the project but had no legal recourse because they signed extensive releases beforehand. Thank God for the nebulous legal system of a post-Soviet regime—this probably wouldn't fly in the good old U.S. of A.

Below is some coverage of Backstage (sorry it's in Polish), but you can see more (of the work and the models) here.

Unaware Guys in "Backstage" (Just a Dream)