Reading as a happening
Four participants, the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir and a staged setting. Reading aloud turned the text into an encounter with the audience.
← Artist
10 Hours of Gomorrah
In 2021, I presented 10 Hours of Gomorrah at Outside Festival in Kyiv. In this happening, four participants read passages from the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir in a staged, intimate setting. Through reading, voices and physical presence, I brought questions of freedom, desire and moral limits into the festival’s musical environment.
How the action unfolded
Within Outside
Outside 2021’s art programme occupied the former ribbon factory on Nyzhnioyurkivska Street. Performance and installation were its principal forms; I curated the programme.
About the project
Conceived as a homage to the Marquis de Sade and Federico Fellini, 10 Hours of Gomorrah brought literary provocation into a live, collective situation. Reading became a form of performance, shaped by the participants’ voices, the staged surroundings and the presence of an audience.
BDSM clothing designer Egor Bashtovenko, director and artist Yevhen Korshunov and other participants read passages from Philosophy in the Boudoir. The text’s insistence on sexual freedom provided a point of departure for the happening. Presented within Outside Festival, the work brought these questions into a contemporary music setting, allowing a historically provocative text to be encountered through theatrical action and physical presence.