2017
I have the red cap on in this performance… Thank you Annie & Beth
“My lovely wife and collaborator, Beth Stephens and I got all set up to do the Sidewalk Clinic outside in public space, between two of Joseph Beuy’s 7,000 oaks. But with a big storm on the way, the safety monitors didn’t want us to get struck by lightning. So we were moved inside the Fridericianum museum into the “Parliament of Bodies” space, a very historic room. Interesting to do the Free Sex Advice clinic inside a quite serious museum.
When Paul B. Preciado, curator of public events, invited us to do our Clinic piece for Documenta, we obliged. Putting out a call for collaborators about a month ago, our call was answered by the most wonderful group of sex experts. Thanks to Kristina Marlen posting our call on her FB page in Berlin about half were her friends and colleagues from Berlin. We also hadIt King Erik from Emmetrop in Bourges france, and a added Japanese artist friend of Beth’s last minute, Hiroko Kikuchi. She had been at our wedding to the Earth. About half were sex workers, and the other half artists. Most were both.” Annie Sprinkle 2017
“In Kassel, the Parliament of Bodies is hosted in the rotunda of the Fridericianum. Constructed under Friedrich II, the building opened in 1779 as a library and one of the first public museums in Europe. In 1810, Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia and Napoleon’s youngest brother, for a short period transformed the rotunda of the Fridericianum into the first parliamentary building in Germany. In the 1930s, the building also served as a gathering place for the Nazi Party, before being burnt to ruins during bombing raids on Kassel in 1941 and 1943. From 1955, it has been the most emblematic site of the documenta exhibition.”
Exhibitions
Documenta, Kassel Germany
Related Links
You can read more about Documenta’s fantastic Parliament of Bodies project here:
