Curator Paul B. Preciado asked us if we could (re)do our piece Cuddle during the first few days of documenta 14’s Athens official opening. Although we had not performed Cuddle in well over a decade, we were game to revive the piece. Given the current state of the world, a lot of humans and nonhumans could use a good cuddle. A queen-sized bed was installed in the lobby of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (E.M.S.T.), April 8–10, 2016. The mattress and three pillows were covered with dark blue cotton sheets and pillowcases, an insider reference to the deep blue sea. Paul wrote a curatorial statement which was posted by our bed.
CUDDLING ATHENS
They say: close the borders.
We say: cuddle.
They say: build a wall.
We say: cuddle.
They say: fear the foreigner, watch the stranger.
They say: praise the individual, compete, win.
We say: cuddle.
Artists Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens have installed a bed within the museum lobby where they propose to cuddle every visitor who would like to participate for 7 minutes. An active answer to the increasingly aggressive political measures taken globally against the survival of vulnerable bodies, the piece questions also the relationship between labor and sex, interrogating the exclusion of certain gestures and affects within the neoliberal regime.
We did Cuddle for three days. We worked together with a host/timekeeper who would stand nearby with a signup sheet on a pedestal, where people could sign up to cuddle us. When it was the next person’s turn, the host would ask the cuddler to take off their shoes. Once the cuddler was in bed with us, a timer was set for seven minutes. Over the course of the performance we cuddled curators, artists, locals, tourists, sex workers, young people, old people, naked people, and anyone who wanted to cuddle. Sometimes we cuddled couples, or friends together. We cuddled journalists who interviewed us as they snuggled between our bodies. We even cuddled a transvestite wearing a niqab.
Cuddle embodied our interest in existing beside others, no matter how problematic, rather than dominating those people who seem different than oneself. Using the platform provided by documenta 14, we cuddled as an artistic and political act of visible and embodied resistance.