COME ALIVE — morgan

COME ALIVE

Role: Curator
Year: 2022
City: Utrecht

COME ALIVE celebrated eroticism as a life force in these precarious times. Through touch, image, scent, sound, performance and play, more than 45 artists pulled out all the stops to give our bodies a voice as the first and most important gatekeeper. Sharing "love without reason" in all its abundance allows new insights and helps us to unlearn inherited behaviours. In the old melting room of the Nieuwe Muntgebouw in Utrecht, Netherlands, where once rock-hard coins were minted, everything became fluid.

“ONLY SEX WAS A SUFFICIENTLY POWERFUL FORCE TO RESHAPE SOCIETY”
- OLIVIA LAING

Photo by APN

Vitality and precarity may appear to be opposites, but they are in fact two sides of the same coin. Moments of crisis and scarcity are much more bearable when we are close to each other. The most trying times bring people together and make us recognize what really matters. Eroticism is about connection, and is capable of reshaping entire societies, which is precisely why it is so often regulated by authoritarian regimes.

We don’t have to accept external controls, we have within us everything we need to create alternatives. We only need to remind ourselves to be playful again, to push our boundaries and discover new worlds. The magic of sensual play with the unexpected other is what makes us feel alive.

COME ALIVE invited us to unbox our sexualities, discard our preconceptions and make space for new possibilities. By stepping inside the halls Vibrate, Embrace, Extend and Climax we were granted permission to experience new forms of pleasure, letting our bodies react to the scents, sights and sounds. This manifestation posed an invitation to curiosity where we can explore without fear of judgement, letting ourselves move and be moved within the exhibition.

Photo by Geert Jan van Rooij

“When times are good, eroticism is what converts the mundane into magic. When times are tough, eroticism is what inspires us to survive, and even to thrive, despite all odds." —Esther Perel

Artists:

AES + F 
Alice Heron
 Alix Marie
Angel Rose Oedit Doebé 
Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens
Annika Kappner
Bas Kosters
Chang Gao 
Company New Heroes
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Eli Joteva
Ernesto Neto

Esther Arribas
Frank Bloem
Geoffrey Lillemon
 Hsin Min Chan
Hyenaz
Inge & Martin Riebeek
Jan Koen Lomans
Jesse Jones 
 Johan Grimonprez
Joyce Overheul
Laura A Dima 
Margriet van Breevoort 
melanie bonajo

Mette Sterre
Naomi Rincón Gallardo
ORGIE 
Oscar Peters
Pauline Curnier Jardin 
Samantha Nye
Sophie Calle 
sWitches
The Army of Love 
Viktoria Kova 
Wafae Ahalouch el Keriasti
Yamuna Forzani 
Zoi Tatopoulos 

Press:
Volkskrant, Trouw, De Telegraaf, Parool, Metropolis M, NRC and more.

Workshop Program:
The Mouth is a Microcosmic Pleasure Portal * Day of Sex Work * The Army of Love * Sexual First Aid with GGD * What Does It Mean To Be A Man? * Embodied Tour: Playing with Movement, Touch and Breathing * What About Scissoring? * Ask Me How It Works * Shibari and Energy Play Workshop * From Fantasy to Film: Design Your Own Erotic Movie * Breaking Gender Myths to Increase Sexual Pleasure * MUSE Dutch Premiere * Sex with More People * The Pleasurable Sex Session

Exhibition Text:

In a place where once rock hard coins were minted, you may now become fluid. Unbox your sexuality, discard your preconceptions, make space for new possibilities. By stepping inside these halls you are granted permission to your pleasure. Let your body react to the scents, sights and sounds. This manifestation is an invitation to curiosity where you can play without fear of judgement, letting yourself move and be moved within the exhibition.

COME ALIVE proposes a step towards reclaiming agency in these disempowering times. Eroticism can be a soft weapon against the systemic precarity we all face under socially distanced, neoliberal techno-capitalist surveillance states.

Restricting social bonds and controlling sexuality are perennial tools of social and economic control precisely because of their innate power. Eroticism gives political movements life because within it we find meaning, strength, and the love and connection that form the basis of social change.

We know that all we need is already within our reach. We reject the gatekeeper’s paradigm of scarcity thinking, market solutions and industrial complexes in favour of abundance and compersion (opposite of jealousy and possessiveness). This interconnectedness, our basic trust in each other, can help us to overcome oppression and unlock new possibilities for healing on the collective and individual level.

So many of us learned about our own sexuality through the lens of another — a clumsy lover, an erotophobic biology teacher, a shame inherited from someone else. But what is eroticism for you, actually?

At COME ALIVE, we experience eroticism as a creative energy: an untameable, inexhaustible force that makes us feel alive and connected. It is a potent space for accepting contradictions, inviting us to inhabit and even enjoy the liminal spaces between pleasure or pain, masculine or feminine, dominant or submissive. Your imagination has no limits; there is no ‘one true way’. By staying in the unknown, the unconscious becomes conscious.

Now it is your time to discover what makes you come alive.