ZootenGenant in deze website

Gallerie De Praktijk
TESTPORTAL
Dramayama
KC&NoNa/ CCm Mechelen
Gil en Moty gallery Rotterdam 2008
Arti& Amicitiae 2000
De Fabriek, Eindhoven
Vrieshuis Amerika
P-Houses Gallery Tokyo
Theater am Rudolfplatz
Sex Riot (Eurotop 1996 )
Sculpture Models
Stuurtjes!

2007    Cinema Obscene, overzicht van zootengenant media performances, Haarlem
2007    De Stellingen betrekken/ DasArts festival , DasArts en Nieuwpoort theater Gent
2007     Dangerous Liasons, Art and Genomics centre, with Adam Zaretski, UVLeiden performance
2007     Open Lab DasArts, Interview with philospher Alain Badiou DVD
2007     GOUD, Wasteland Amsterdam (interactive performance)
2007     FIlmmakersperformance; Parallel Event  with Jihu Houn, Bourla Schouwburg, Antwerpen.
2006      Pers-muskieten tijdens Huellas, Theatre Embassy Club 11
2006       Huisdealers Museumnacht Rotterdam, Gil en Moti Homegallery Performance
2005    ‘The Art and Politics of Netporn’ Libidoc ,network cultures. De Badkuyp
2004       Simultaneous Visions‘, Fuque Les Balles, Erwin Olaf, Amsterdam
2003           image Reactor, “Wargasm” Shortfilmfestifal, De Balie installatie
2003           Zoot CoutureTest Portal 2003 Amsterdam install/media perf
2002          Rapa Nui, Paas-Eiland, PEK Filmfestival, Den Haag video live editting video installation
2002      128 website films made by over 120 participants http://www.emotioneelstadsplan.nl
2002       Speel Fillumpje maken, Fuque Les Balles, Erwin Olaf, Amsterdam
2002           Porn Ar(t)round the World, CCM en KC Nona, Mechelen expo/perf
2000- 2004 “ Sex and Politics “Interview project directors at Cannes / IFFR Rotterdam Filmfestival/ IDFA
2000-2003   Live- Television projects : 02 02 02Stubnitz/ Wargasm/  Http://www.bellissima.net
2001-2004Editor, researcher and producer at  Bellissima, a weekly Cultural tv programm,
2000       Roadmovie Whitetrash , Perdu, Amsterdam, Raw video-install.
2000       Mc Cloud Surveillance, Amsterdam, nieuwe media install.
2000    Cos Play, Arti en Amicitiae, Amsterdam, video/foto tentoonst.
2000    Media Tactics in an Advanced sexualized society, EmersonCollege, Boston USA,
1999     Multiglamedia, Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, workshop/lezing
1997       Home Tape Club, Theater am Rudolfplatz , KOLN, live mixing media perf.
1997     Cyberswinging, HBO tv CU See ME, Parijs,TV perf./doc.
1996       Meat Sexu Taco P-house gallery, Japan, expo./perf./install.

 
ZOOTENGENANT PUBLICATIONS
NRC- Handelsblad/ Volkskrant / Parool/ Vrij Nederland / De Groene Amsterdammer/ OOR Playboy / PTOESK/ SWITCH Magazine/ Slam/ Highlife/ Rails/ What are DasArts? / CREAM/ DasArts Digital Dodge/ LIBIDOC/Mr Motley/ de Telegraaf/ IDFA DAILY/IDFA jubileum glossie/ De Toren/ Identity Matters/ Filmkrant/ NRCnext/ NRCHandelsblad /UitKrant/ Balie Nieuws/ ZINE (filmmuseum)

Het Wonder van Amsterdam (2006)

Video performance and Videostills

17 december- 08 januari 2006  2005


The Miracle of Amsterdam.
obscene/serene video performance stills
Gallery De Praktijk


In the summer of 2002 ZootenGenant made a name for themselves by their legendary streaming internet performance '8x8x72 Fucking Retreat', a meditation on the globalisation of intercourse, in De Praktijk.
Their performance consisted of 8 days, 8 times a day, 72 thrusts without an ejaculation. The gallery website went out flat by the enormous amount of visitors. For the inhabitants of Easter Island, who happened to have free access to the internet, '8x8x72 Fucking Retreat' was a tremendous hit. ZootenGenant have been revered there like superstars

And now ZootenGenant are finally back at De Praktijk with their Christmas show:
The Miracle Of Amsterdam

ZootenGenant travelled to the ancient Dravidic culture where, inspired by wondrous rituals, they came to Dramayana in the hotel bathroom and on the balcony. All this was recorded on video. In The Miracle Of Amsterdam, ZootenGenant show obscene/serene video performance stills.
Different opening hours!!!

You are kindly invited to the Epiphany Finissage on 6 January 4 - 6 pm.
17 - 23 December and 2 - 8 January De Praktijk will be opened every day 1 - 6 pm. 17 December - 8 January The work 'Big Window' will be illuminated and visible from the canal.

EXTRA 03 01 2006 /19-20 uur/ A1 Salto locale tv /Zootengenant in De Praktijk/ performance broadcast

Fucking Retreat (8x8x72)  (2002)

Streaming Internet Performances

Text van Katrien Jacobs, Kc en NoNa Mechelen 2002


I first met the enigmatic artist-couple Zoot and Genant in the Summer of 2000. We talked for a while about their performances with the collective Artporn and their later work as a duo. They explained a Taoist sex ritual to me, and told me how they performed this ritual outdoors and indoors while visiting Tokyo. They decided to fuck a number of times each day for a number of days, without coming to climax/ejaculation, and registering how the energy between them and around them slowly transformed.

Zoot and Genant are an archetypal Dutch couple radiating the best of hippie culture, media activism and advanced technological networking in underground scenes. As good Dutch citizens, they interfere in global media debates with sexually avanced thinking and a harsh critique of consumerist sex and drugs industries. If you think of them as exhibitionists, they will tell you that they are actants to your own voyeuristic needs. The amount of effort they put into breaking down normative ideas and emotions about sex and porn is enormous. A uniquely burlesque quality enters their work, as their sexual-artistic gestures take unusually dreamy and raw forms. Performance modes are invented from the bottom up in clever concepts and physically daring actions such as the Oysterbarpiece (1995) or the Anal Restaurant (1996). In this last performance, a performer is tied onto a rotating platform his/her bottom stuffed with mashed potatoes, excremental mixture flying all over the gallery when the platform is brought to a halt. Zoot and Genant create fresh erotic energy in response to selected sites and audiences, who are sometimes heightened and sometimes half paralyzed. Energy circulates freely between performers and audiences, creating joy and havoc.

In Oysterbarpiece (1996), performed in several cities in the Netherlands, Genet asked members of the collective and the audience to suck oysters from between her legs. She stood on her head with open legs and ‘gazed back’ at the bold participant by taking their picture on camera. In this Artporn performance, she wanted to make audiences aware of their role as voyeur by ‘reversing their gaze,’ arguing that every voyeur is a sexual being to somebody’s else’s gazing eye.As they wrote in the Irotic Manifesto, reversing the gaze meant opening up new and uncensored spaces of eroticism: “The historically situated gaze is turned upside down and no longer do we stare into a void. We create many more spaces than are actually allowed. Physical and public spaces are put under pressure. (…) You may enter space with a certain literary baggage, the handcuffs of Sacher-Masoch welded to the wonders of Rabelais. We make use of the porn industry, rooted in private spheres and commercial businesses, in order to trample on public spaces and to widen all entrances to bodily cavities.”

Theories of erotic space were tested out in community spaces or ‘breeding grounds,’ while special attention was paid to the role of the mass media. Zoot explains that the difference between live happenings and media happening is enormous as live happenings do not conceal the performer’s body, nor his/her state of excitement, They opted for an internet performance with Fucking Retreat 8X8X72. The artists held an eight day retreat in the Gallery De Praktijk and demonstrated regular sexual intercourse by means of a webcam. Going back to the Taoist ritual, they fucked eight times a day and each time for eight days, having 72 thrusts on each particular occasion and an attempt not to reach orgasm. Through this extremely popular webaction they reached a height in media activism, as they became the medium itself, were able to manipulate all buttons , and offer destabalizing image to hordes of sexually conditioned net viewers. Bianca Stigter describes the first day of this performance: “On the first day it turns out that Zoot and Genant are not into naked sex. They have brought all kinds of costumes and are wearing funny hats, dresses and pants. Zoot makes his cock do a little dance in front of the camera. They are rolling around in an antique bed and are doing it underneath the blankets. Genant penetrates Zoot elegantly with a dildo. They do yoga exercises on a mat. Zoot fucks in the air. It is all filmed by one camera that does not zoom in.” Not zooming is explained as a political choice yet Cees Maris signals the performance as ‘post-revolutionary’, as the couple represent a complete melting of monogamy and polymorphous perversity: “And the postrevolutionary libido? Despite all polymorphous perverse sex on television, a moral majority of 68% chooses for serial monogamy these days.”

Dirk Verstockt