WE ARE NOT YOUR DEMOISELLES

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

26 September 2018

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This symposium accompanies the exhibition

CANDICE BREITZ: SEX WORK
Museum Frieder Burda I Salon Berlin
21. September 2018 - 5. January 2019

Featuring talks by Candice Breitz, Melissa Gira Grant, Änne Söll and Nosipho ‘Provocative’ Vidima. Moderation by Elke Buhr.

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10h30 - 11h00:
Introduction

11h00 - 12h00
KEYNOTE TALK
Änne Söll

The motif of the sex worker appears again and again across the art historical canon. Several of modernism’s most definitive and widely celebrated masterpieces—including Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) and Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)—feature sex workers prominently, effectively casting the viewer as the buyer of sexual services. This presentation will consider the heated debates that have been prompted by representations of sex work, surveying the recurring appearance of the sex worker as subject within modern art, but also within the practice of contemporary figures such as Andrea Fraser and Tobias Zielony.

12h00 - 13h00
Lunch

13h00 - 14h00
SAVE YOUR WHITE TEARS, GIVE ME FREEDOM
Candice Breitz

A visit to the Salon Berlin with Candice Breitz, who will introduce her works TLDR (2017) and Sweat (2018). TLDR is a portrait of a community of sex workers who live and work in Cape Town. The work grew out of a series of interviews and an intensive workshop with the featured participants, extending an ongoing conversation between Breitz and SWEAT (Sex Workers Education & Advocacy Taskforce), the non-profit organisation with which the sex workers are affiliated. Very much a sequel to Breitz’s Love Story (2016), TLDR invites reflection on the relationship between whiteness, privilege and visibility; and on the shrinkage of attention spans within an information economy that fetishizes celebrity and thrives on entertainment. The work points a finger at itself to bluntly ask whether and how artists living privileged lives can succeed in amplifying calls for social justice and meaningfully representing marginalised communities.

14h00 - 15h00
SEX WORKERS ARE NOT YOUR ART
Nosipho ‘Provocative’ Vidima, with Candice Breitz

Cape Town-based sex work activist Nosipho ‘Provocative’ Vidima (who appears in TLDR and Sweat), will speak about the challenges facing sex work communities as they fight towards the decriminalisation and de-stigmatisation of sex work in South Africa and beyond, offering insight into the strategies and goals of SWEAT (the Sex Worker’s Education and Advocacy Taskforce).

During this session, Vidima and Breitz will discuss the making of TLDR, revisiting some of the critical conversations that shaped the work. They will consider the often-fraught relationship between art and activism, the blindness of privilege and the severe limitations of white feminism. They will also remember Nokuphila Kumalo, a young woman who was violently murdered by one of her clients in a suburb of Cape Town in 2013. Kumalo's senseless death remains emblematic of the extreme and relentless violence faced by sex workers globally. It was against the backdrop of the vehement protests that SWEAT staged each time her killer—a celebrated South African artist—appeared in court (over the course of an absurdly prolonged trial), that TLDR evolved. The work is dedicated to the memory of Nokuphila Kumalo.

15h00 - 16h00
SEX WORKERS ARE NOT YOUR RESCUE PROJECT
Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant, journalist and author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work, will address "the celebrity media industrial complex” (a phenomenon that is also explored in TLDR), casting light on the mutually beneficial relationship that exists between political positions that are anti-sex worker rights and a mainstream news economy that is driven by celebrity and clicks. She will also discuss the saviour complex that is integral to much reporting on sex work; the tendency of journalists to cast themselves as heroes and human rights defenders, as they consistently exclude the voices of those they seek to rescue, ignoring the power and agency of sex workers.

16h00 - 17h00
NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US
Symposium Participants

An open conversation between Candice Breitz, Melissa Gira Grant and Nosipho ‘Provocative’ Vidima, during which questions from the audience will be welcomed.