We Feel a Desire for Caresses by Men (Portrait Parlé)
2022
Performance approx. 30 min (English), structure in wood, tourguide system, loudspeakers, etc.
We Feel a Desire for Caresses by Men (Portrait Parlé) is a development of the performance We Feel a Desire for Caresses by Men (the Gothenburg Affair) shown at Göteborgs Konsthall 2021—2022, based on material from the same infamous trial from the late 1930s. The legal proceedings investigated the network around a circle of homosexual men, and the narratives that emerged are deeply influenced by the criminology and forensic psychiatry of the era.
The intrusive forensic psychiatric examinations describe the defendants’ physical and mental status in detail and create a kind of “Portrait Parlé” (the Spoken Portrait); the French anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon’s idea that anthropometric descriptions could be used to identify previously punished criminals. This becomes a way of cataloging and determining the “species” of individuals based on body and character, similar to the classification systems used in botany.
In this version, specially conceived for VOLT project and staged in the Bergen Botanical Garden, the many voices of the forensic psychiatric documents form a monologue performed by an actor as a choreographic mirroring of an erotic photo collection found in the home of one of the men. The police used the collection’s intimate images to identify the people involved. The bodily and sensual becomes a source of resistance and empowerment, activated in the present and moving through time to permeate and heal the wounds of history.
Performance with Ido Grinberg, Bergen Botanical Garden/Muséhagen, 2022. Photo: Bjørn Mortensen/VOLT Projects.
Performer: Ido Grinberg. Director and Script: Conny Karlsson Lundgren. Sound: [inaudible] (Amanda Lindbom Edwall & Johan Sundell). Translation: Conny Karlsson Lundgren and Benny Nemer. Wood structure: Mattias Norström.
We Feel a Desire for Caresses by Men (Portrait Parlé) is a development of the performance We Feel a Desire for Caresses by Men (the Gothenburg Affair) first shown in With New Eyes—The Interwar Period Seen Through A Lens at Göteborgs Konsthall 2021—2022. It is the third part of an extensive project that began with Prologue (The Gothenburg Affair), featured in the exhibition The New Eye at The Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, 2021.
Based on material from Gothenburg City Hall Court and the magistrate’s archive, the National Archives in Gothenburg. The project is produced with a research and production grant from the Erna & Victor Hasselblad Foundation. Great thanks to Muséhagen, Universitetshagene, UiB. This version was commissioned by VOLT Project
Performances: Muséhagen/Botanical Gardens, Bergen NO.