by Kimdotdammit - 25 Set., 2007

   Kohei Yoshiyuki: Sex, evidence, and art

    by Kimdotdammit

I don’t know what I like more -- Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photographs, the concept behind the photographs or the parks at which they were taken. I guess it’s the entire combination. Certainly when I first glimpsed one of his photographs I was attracted to it like I would be attracted to a crime scene photo. I saw these bodies sprawled in a field and figured it was some kind of interesting arty document of a sex crime scene (think Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster paintings). But then again the photo looked staged, like it was set up to look like a sex crime scene. I looked a little closer and realized it wasn’t a sex crime scene at all, but a sex act scene. But when I looked at it a little closer, it didn’t look like either art or sex. The way it was documented looked more like photographic evidence than intentional art, like something taken by a private dick out to prove adultery. Something about it seemed haphazard, off-the-cuff, opportunistic. But I liked the weird aura of the photo – the tension between a sense of staginess and a sense of accidental trespass and voyeurism, so I looked a little more to find out what this photograph was.

What I discovered is an utterly fascinating 1970’s Japanese culture in which communal sex, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and documentation took place in public parks. What looks in the photograph like a clandestine sexual tryst being secretly documented is indeed a clandestine sexual tryst, but it is consciously acted out in public for people to watch, photograph, and sometimes participate in. It’s like public performance sex art culture. This is like a mass scale “happening” that is not exclusive to artists, but is performed by the general public. It’s like taking the little jerk-off booths in the back room of dirty bookstores and removing the walls, turning on the lights, and inviting people to watch. Those watching the forbidden acts become a part of the act itself. With the walls removed, the contract between those who watch and those engaging in the sexual act creates a new act itself. It is this combination of those who are having sex, those who are watching from behind bushes, those who are filming, and those who join physically in the act that creates this entire new realm that is itself a bizarre public art performance.

Yoshiyuki’s documentation of this phenomenon certainly brings together the complexities of “the scene.” His photos themselves are at once an act of art, evidence, soft core porn, and social anthropology. I don’t know enough about him to say more. These are just my impressions, but I am totally fascinated. Certainly in the 1970’s there was no shortage of public places – restrooms, adult bookstores, bathhouses – where a silent contract existed for purposes of sexual exploits, but never have I read about one in which part of the package was making the exploits available for public view and documentation. Certainly these concepts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, performance and staging are ones that were explored by performance artists in the 70’s, but this isn’t an “art” happening; it’s just a public phenomenon. It happened in parks with regular people. It wasn’t some kind of art school treatise acted out in public, but the public acting in public. The theoretical implications make my mind spin, in a good way. I want to learn more about this.

Read the article on his work.

See photos from the series.

Audio/Video: Layers of Voyeurism - see & hear

Via: Sex in the Park, and Its Sneaky Spectators - read more…

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