The NarcoSexuals [16+]

Scrolling through their phones they go in search of sex, sex like they’ve never had before, sex beyond the imaginable. Horny and determined they get on their bikes, a phial of GHB or a bag of 3mmc or something in their pockets. Disobeying the request for social distancing, giving the health cult the finger, rebelling against the loneliness that is lurking all the time. They meet on a couch in a random living room somewhere in town. They snuggle up, they talk and talk, they fuck each other to kingdom come, sometimes they faint, in each other’s arms, they take care of each other. Meet: The NarcoSexuals.

In his latest work, Verhoeven investigates the ins and outs of sexual drug use, a phenomenon that is gaining popularity especially among gay men. Forty years after the start of the gay liberation, we’re entering a ‘narco-sexual revolution’, even though this current liberation is invisible to the outside world. What pushes people to even risk their own lives? How different are they allowed to be?

• Dries Verhoeven (1976 Oosterhout, the Netherlands) is a theatre maker and visual artist. Since 2020 he has been a member of the Akademie van Kunsten (Dutch Society of Arts). He creates installations, performances and happenings in museums, on location and in the public spaces of cities. On the boundary between performance and installation art, he critically evaluates the relationships between the spectators, performers, everyday reality and art. The spectator is directly involved in the work or given the opportunity to steer his or her own experiences. In his work, Verhoeven highlights aspects of the common social reality in which we live. He is not concerned with conveying a statement about reality, but mainly about unbalancing the visitor in order to evoke a shared vulnerability between the viewer and the viewed work. With gestures, which radically affect the public order of everyday life, he hopes to sow the seeds of doubt about the systems that inconspicuously influence our thoughts and actions. In recent years, the current crisis mind-set and the influence of digital media on interpersonal relationships in particular have formed the basis for his projects.

“No other performance last season impressed the jury more physically, thanks in part to its intelligent play between looking and being looked at. What we perhaps appreciate even more about this permeating installation is its fusion of different art domains to create new frames of meaning.” — #jury23