SEXWORK IS HONEST WORK / UNDERSTORY CHANT

Roaming Assembly#29 presents sonsbeek Council#3, SEX WORK IS HONEST WORK, an ongoing invocation convened by sonsbeek20→24.

“I would argue that, at this point, ‘sex worker’ is an identity—a political one.” $thotscholar

On invitation of and in collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and Olu Oguibe, sonsbeek20→24 presents the third sonsbeek Council#3: SEX WORK IS HONEST WORK. A two-day collective study, speaking and broadcasting in order to trace the ways gender, spatial politics, intimate labour and race intersect at the “margins of societies.” It departs from the artist, theorist and curator Olu Oguibe’s public installation and series of gatherings titled Sex Work Is Honest Work. With this project we call attention to the need to unpack the historical denial of sex work as labour and its subsequent present day implications as we examine its complexities in relation to the inequalities and injustices that characterize migrant or indentured labour.

This two-day program is an attempt to open up and contextualize the public discourse around gendered, intimate/erotic labour and sex work, on the conjuncture where care, intimacy and money meet. Especially during this global pandemic when vulnerable workers are pushed into fragile existence at the “low end” of the market. A market where workers  are often at the forefront of “critiques of this legal system that implements policing to keep the ‘sacred’ out of markets while enabling corporations to profit on the caging of human beings.” As we try to unlearn the dominant empowerment/exploitation binary that is prevalent in a general discourse around sex work and intimate labour, we look closely at who benefits from this social stigmatization? What should be urgently considered when theorizing and thinking through practices of gendered, sex, intimate work?

During this public gathering, sonsbeek wants to look together with sex and erotic workers, artists, advocates, theorists, thinkers, students and hustlers closely at the genealogy of the discourse around sex work and the way it is embedded in savior politics, morality, property relation and capital across borders and geographies. With contributions by Barby Asante, Ola Hassanain, Kamala Kempadoo (digital), Simone Lagrand, Pascale Obolo, Milone Reigman, Maria Scali and others.

Olu Oguibe’s Sex Work Is Honest Work installations and gatherings are animated by the death of a young woman named Nokuphila Kumalo who was kicked and stomped to death on a Cape Town street by a man later identified as renowned South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa. Kumalo was only twenty-three-years old. She also happened to be a sex worker and her murderer is believed to have been a client.

DAI presents UNDERSTORY CHANT: 24 aeroponic acts, 24 conversations-in-a-form, invigorated by sonsbeek20→24.

Each act of 20 minutes offers a question as a practice of engagement. Invited respondents, by means of a spoken, improvised reflection, help us think through what is embodied and proposed by:

Ilgın Deniz Akseloğlu, Mayar Alexan, Mia van den Bos, Philippa Driest, Alexandra Duvekot, Miguel Ferráez, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Hubert Gromny, Csilla Klenyánszki, Elvis Krstulović, Raffia Li, Niccolò Masini, Azul De Monte, Rosa Ronsdorf, Kari Rosenfeld, Gabriela dos Santos, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Sophie de Serière, Raul Silva, Georgia Stellin, Anna Piroska Tóth, Marie Tučková́, Clara Winter and Zane Zajančkauska.

 As respondent, sonsbeek20→24 invited Barby Asante,  who will be joined by respondents convened by DAI. Curated and presented by Giulia Crispiani, with Gabriëlle Schleijpen as co-curator.

The alliance between DAI and sonsbeek20→24 radiates outwards in multiple efforts, culminating into a joint program: a hybrid of sonsbeek20→24‘s councils and DAI’s Roaming Assembly (a recurring, guest curated public symposium). Iterations revolve around, touch upon and articulate in different ways the connections between the educational efforts of DAI and the line of questioning around ‘labour and its sonicities’ that is central to sonsbeek20→24.