Are you in Berlin and on Grindr? Want to go make pancakes, trim nails or play chess with artist Dries Verhoeven inside a glass-walled container in a Berlin Kreuzberg square?
Potentially lucky participants are being solicited right now by the Dutch artist via the gay hook-up app. He says, “we’ll shave one another or read to one another from our favorite books.” Oh, boy!
The whole thing is being live-streamed on his website, which also provides a handy glossary of terms, so you can enjoying spying on their conversations better — idk = I don’t know; cu = see you; ff = fist fucking; Chems friendly = Drogen beim Sex gut finden (“Find drugs during sex good” or something like that) and Cub = junger, kräftiger, behaarter, oft bärtiger, rauer mann (I give up). But the actual encounters appear to be much less racy and… cozy. Cute. Nice. Still exhibitionist. But sweet.
The artist is in there with five smart phones, projecting his activity onto large screens. The faces of his “hook-ups” are being inverted and slightly blurred, but it still kind of waves a privacy concern flag.
Artnet explains:
Verhoeven has conceded that he may see little response from a privacy-minded city like Berlin and one with a relatively low adoption rate of technology. Twitter and other social media platforms have seen meager response from the German populace compared to other similarly-developed economies; Grindr has about half the penetration rate in Berlin as it does in London, relative to population.
Penetration! Doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any. Sorry, voyeurs. (Photos: Hebbel Am Ufer)
