This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of documenta 6.

Documenta Sex is devoted entirely to the subject of sex in its myriad manifestations and interpretations: from the psychosexual acrobatics of the Jungian and Freudian, to the Beuysian economy of commercial and uncommercial sex, to child abuse, to sexual memoirs, to plain old pornography.

Documenta Sex will use all aspects of the sexual infrastructure of the urban environment: not only the galleries themselves that are always the centerpiece of Documenta, but also the X-rated cinemas, sex shops, bordellos, and habitual routes of streetwalkers, as well as cruising places, public toilets, saunas, massage parlors, and the public parks themselves, not only in Kassel, but wherever artists are found.

Prostitution, of course, has always been at the heart of the art world, and the relationship between the artist and the collector should not be overlooked here. But the particular psychology of the collector, who has displaced his or her love objects into the form of multiple artworks -- that too should be examined. And the psychology of the artist, who must take action in this world to actualize a relation to the world, whose every gesture is a sort of sexual battle stance, must especially be considered.

It is the sex industry that always opens new forms of social expression: the Internet, for example, was pioneered by sex sites, and continues to be dominated by them. The art industry follows close behind, and legitimizes that which the sex industry has already accomplished. So the forms of new art bear an intrinsic relation to the world of sex.

I imagine a Documenta divided, quite conventionally, into two sections: the galleries, which are structured according to certain basic themes; and the public installations, performances, media presentations, and so on, which participate in the sexual economy of cities.

I present here some preliminary notes toward an internal organization of the overall exhibition.

A. In the Galleries (The Idea of Sex):

1. Art industry as sex industry:
The artist as prostitute/the collector as john

2. Sexual abuse:
The artist as abused child

3. Free sex:
The artist as free spirit

4. The legitimization of the pornographic image:
The artist as added value

5. Sampling sex:
The artist as sexual DJ

6. Voyeurism as artwork and the objectification of the other (especially so-called documentary photography)

7. Androgeny, gender-bending, and cross-dressing:
The artist as hermaphrodite

8. The sexualization of danger:
The artist as barebacker

9. Replacing the dick with the cunt:
The artist as radical feminist

B. In the City (The Experience of Sex):
Note: Although many of the following might be presented in Kassel, the majority are intended to be carried out in the hometowns of the artists themselves, thus decentralizing Documenta Sex.

1. Guerilla sex: peeping toms, flashers, dirty old men and women:
Artists’ interventions

2. X-rated cinemas, sex shops, sex magazines, video cabins, and live sex shows:
presentation of media works of an “erotic” nature (either actual or metaphorical)

3. Street hookers, escorts, and erotic masseurs:
Artists are invited to produce public works/actions in collaborations with sex workers

4. Saunas and dark rooms:
Aexual interventions, actions without words

5. Cruising places: traditional promenades:
Performance works commissioned for public locales where seeing and being seen are implicit in the existing culture

6. Public parks: by night and by day, secret spots and public spots:
Temporary installations make the invisible visible, the subliminal liminal

7. Public toilets, underground parking lots:
Site-specific interventions

8. Advertising media: billboards, electronic signs, posters, etc.:
Artists are commissioned to produce works on the theme of sex for advertising technologies and venues

9. Television, radio (after midnight):
Commissioned and existing video and audio works by artists

10. Exhibitionism: on the streets:
Artists are invited to perform unscheduled public performances

C. In the Catalogue / On the Web Site:

1. The catalogue should document all of this, but also act as pornography itself. The success of the catalogue should be judged by the number of involuntary hard-ons and wet cunts, the volume of precum, and the proportion of scrambled brains produced by exposure to the publication.

Portions of the catalogue could be commissioned works by artists in the form of sex publications, calendars, and so on, which could also be distributed in sex shops and select art bookshops worldwide.

2. The Web site should be fully interactive and act as a venue within which the public can participate in the sexual economy of the whole project.

Perhaps a number of artists could be asked to produce projects that would realize this goal. Or artists could be invited to produce collaborations with existing sex sites that act as a sort of colonization of the Web sex world.

In closing:

Documenta Sex is unique in its ability to participate parasitically in the larger social and financial economy, through the distribution systems and formats of both the sex industry and the infrastructure of unregulated sex.

Documenta Sex provides artists with access to a vast network of worldwide audiences, in addition to the art world itself. In this sense it is implicitly different from recent Documentas, which have used art and artists as illustrations or infill, rather than providing the artist with the tools and support to infiltrate the “real world.”

Documenta Sex concerns itself with the energies that are the source of life and of art. Sex has become a central concern to artists and theorists over the last fifty years -- but it has yet to be publicly acknowledged, addressed, or studied in an institutional setting or on a comprehensive scale.

Documenta Sex should be, above all else, sexy.