Curator Paul B. Preciado asked us to do a series of three Sidewalk Sex Clinics in and around Athens, Greece, as part of documenta 14’s public programs. We prepared plexiglass standing placards to put on our tables with our neatly typed names, bios and sex education offerings which read like scores sprinkled with a dose of Fluxus absurdity. We offered radical sex education, although we sprinkled in some practical sex advice.
The documenta 14 team helped us enlist some local sex educators for the performance. We knew that it was important to have Greek citizens be part of our clinician team. Paul brought on board Activista, a genderqueer safe sex expert and an amazing drag performer, as well as Dr. Bubuke aka Bubu, a trans woman with a Ph.D. who offered advice in transgender and queer issues and counter hegemonic sexual practices. There had been some horrible anti-GLBTQ+ violence around Athens, so we were assigned a body guard. The documenta 14 production team members, including our main handler for the clinics project, Maria Dolores, were all extremely helpful when scouting and reserving our sites and setting up the tables, chairs and signs. Our good friend, Veronica Vera, dean of the Academy for Boys Who Want to Be Girls, joined us from New York. Our French friends from Emmetrop art center, King Erik and his wife Mamita, joined us as well.
The people of Athens were generous with us and hopefully our Free Sidewalk Sex Clinic, which documenta 14 described as a nomadic performance, helped open up more space for queer and marginalized people in Athens as it opened more minds to creative sex positivity and absurdist sex humor.