2021 ~ Arnhem, the Netherlands: Roaming Assembly#29 presents Sonsbeek Council#3 ~ SEXWORK IS HONEST WORK ~ an ongoing invocation convened by sonsbeek20→24.

| tag: Arnhem

Roaming Assembly#29 presents Sonsbeek Council#3 ~ SEXWORK IS HONEST WORK - an ongoing invocation convened by sonsbeek20→24

With contributions by:

Barby Asante, Dina de Riquet-Bons, Hella Dee, Ola Hassanain, Kamala Kempadoo, Simone Lagrand, Quirine Lengkeek, Pascale Obolo, Olu Oguibe, Milone Reigman, Thot Scholar & Mavi Veloso.

INTRODUCTION

“I would argue that, at this point, “sex worker” is an identity — a political one.” $thotscholar

On invitation of and in collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and Olu Oguibe, sonsbeek20→24 presents the third sonsbeek Council#3: SEX WORK IS HONEST WORK. A two day collective study, speaking and broadcasting in order to trace the ways gender, spatial politics, intimate labour and race intersect at the “margins of societies”. It departs from the artist, theorist and curator Olu Oguibe’s public installation and series of gatherings titled SEX WORK IS HONEST WORK. With this project we call attention to the need to unpack the historical denial of sex work as labour and its subsequent present day implications as we examine its complexities in relation to the inequalities and injustices that characterize migrant or indentured labour.

This two-day program is an attempt to open up and contextualize the public discourse around gendered, intimate/erotic labour and sex work, on the conjuncture where care, intimacy and money meet. Especially during this global pandemic when vulnerable workers are pushed into fragile existence at the “low end” of the market. A market where workers are often at the forefront of “critiques of this legal system that implements policing to keep the “sacred” out of markets while enabling corporations to profit on the caging of human beings.” As we try to unlearn the dominant empowerment/exploitation binary that is prevalent in a general discourse around sex work and intimate labour, we look closely at who benefits from this social stigmatization? What should be urgently considered when theorizing and thinking through practices of gendered, sex, intimate work?

During this public gathering, sonsbeek want to look together with sex and erotic workers, artists, advocates, theorists, thinkers, students and hustlers closely at the genealogy of the discourse around sex work and the way it is embedded in savior politics, morality, property relation and capital across borders and geographies.

Olu Oguibe’s “Sex Work Is Honest Work installations and gatherings are animated by the death of a young woman named Nokuphila Kumalo who was kicked and stomped to death on a Cape Town street by a man later identified as renowned South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa. Kumalo was only twenty-three-years old. She also happened to be a sex worker and her murderer is believed to have been a client. The first iteration of the work, an outdoor live installation called Pink and White Flowers in Potchefstroom, South Africa in 2018 consisted of 4,500 live flowering plants to commemorate Kumalo and, by extension, bring up pertinent subjects around sex work, sex workers’ rights, and sex- and gender-related violence.”

PROGRAM

(Schedule might be subject to changes. Please visit the page regularly for updates).

SATURDAY 28 August, 2021

PURCHASE A FREE V-TICKET and follow the instructions on HOW TO JOIN TODAY'S LIVESTREAM

12.00 - 12.10 Poetic offering by Simone Lagrand

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2021 ~ Arnhem, the Netherlands: Roaming Assembly#29 presents Sonsbeek Council#3 ~ SEXWORK IS HONEST WORK ~ an ongoing invocation convened by sonsbeek20→24.

INTRODUCTION

PROGRAM

LOCATION

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