Paul Pfeiffer
b. 1966, Honolulu, HI
A Random Killing, 1997-2024
Found garment fragments, plastic prosthetics, razor blades, acrylic glass, linen
Collection of Jessica Hagedorn

"The collection of Medusa-head buttons displayed here was assembled in NYC in the summer of 1997. Shown for the first time in twenty-seven years, it documents a covert performance enacted over a three-month period from April 27 to July 15 of that year. Each button was secretly cut from a garment in a Versace boutique or fashion warehouse outlet using a homemade prosthetic thumb fitted with a boxcutter blade or other cutting device (included within the button display). This serial act of retail merchandise destruction was intended to resonate on a micro level with a media sensation unfolding at that time around the murder of Gianni Versace, who was shot at point-blank range on the steps of his Miami mansion. As the manhunt for Versace’s killer played out in tabloid headlines and evening news broadcasts across the country, it became evident that the brutal shooting was in fact the climax of a series of murders in which the main suspect was a yet unknown 27-year-old California resident named Andrew Cunanan.In the years since the tragic events of ‘97 many have attempted to tell the story, to explain why it happened, and construct a psychological profile of the killer. Among the most well-known of these: Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors (1999), Gary Indiana’s Three Month Fever (1999), Jessica Hagedorn’s Disposable (a 2007 musical theater adaptation for California’s La Jolla Playhouse), and most recently, FX’s American Crime Story Season 2: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018). Yet many background details of the case remain inconclusive. Was it a crime of passion? Were killer and victim familiar with each other? Did they ever even meet before the deadly encounter? This much we know: Andrew Cunanan was born on August 31, 1969, in National City, CA, the son of a Filipino immigrant father and Italian American mother. As such, he was a child of the Filipino diaspora, which is to say a child of America’s colonial adventures in Southeast Asia. It appears he bore the weight of a kind of generational trauma to do with the aspiration of success within the American Dream, and his inability to achieve his destiny in this regard caused him to run amok."— Paul Pfeiffer