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Fuck Yourself/ Sophrosune

 

 

Graduate Exhibition,
Bezalel 2009 

The title is composed of two words which I read in Michel Foucault’s “The History of Sexuality” series. The first word, Sophrosune, though written in French, originates in ancient Greek and represents a person who is considered a prodigy on behalf of his character: restraint, control, spiritualism and also by good habits such as eating right, not drinking alcohol and engaging in sport activities. This standard was conducted in Ancient Greece and was considered as the best education for citizens and good social behaviour. In the third book, Foucault tells the reader how they used to read dreams in the 4th century a.d. Then, the dream consultants had to deal with dreams such as: “I dreamt I was fucking my slave” - this dream has a positive meaning - the master is active and maximises the use of his assets. On the other hand, a dream such as “I dreamt I gave oral sex to someone else” has a bad meaning since the master found himself in a passive role. 

The most problematic dream related to the standards of passive (bad) and active (good) is the one in which the dreamer fucks himself. In this case, the master was active in order to make itself passive - the ultimate sin.

 

This exhibition wished to create the same effect of the impossible dream - to fuck yourself. Through mirrors which were specially created with silver, the viewer watches the object, and meanwhile he watches his own reflection in the object. He receives and gives pleasure to himself at the same time.

In these terms, I wished the viewer to be the victim (Narkis) of his own reflection.

Photo: Ella Littwitz

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