Steve Cohen arrested for dancing with a chicken tied to his cock at the Eiffel Tower

TO the Eiffel Tower in Paris, where Steve Cohen, dressed in platform heels, a garter, long, gloves and tights has a rooster tied to his penis with a long ribbon.

Police arrived and booked Cohen on a charge of indecent exposure.

“ He danced with the cock for around ten minutes, before being arrested by the police,” his lawyer said. “It’s a disgrace. With this performance, Steven Cohen wanted to evoke his situation, split between two countries. South Africa, his native land, and France, where he lives at the moment. France is throwing artists in prison.”

A little more about the Cock a doodle don’t:

Steven Cohen was born in 1962 in South Africa and lives in Lille, France. He is a performance artist who stages interventions in the public realm and in gallery/theatre spaces. His work invariably draws attention to that which is marginalised in society, starting with his own identity as a gay, Jewish man. One of his best-known performances is Chandelier (2001/2), in which Cohen, dressed in vertiginous heels and an illuminated chandelier tutu, interacted with residents of a squatter camp in Newtown, Johannesburg, as it was in the process of being destroyed; the work exists as both live performance and video documentation of the public intervention.

Says the artist himself:

I don’t actually know what the fu*k performance art is, yet I’m brilliant at it. Does this mean that I’m a fraud. No! It simply proves that performance art is not a practice informed by theory … and that I’m honest and a little vain… When I live art and intervene in public, it is the performance of the place I’m in i.e. it’s operation or functioning, that I am using as my medium. When I appear (visual art) as a beautifully constructed and living artwork, the performance of the place and the performances of the people there are what may be called performance art – I am living art. I am full of spirit. I breathe and radiate defiance and fear and dignity and sacrifice. It is the magic from my imagination literally given life. Temporarily, I am more powerful than any dead drawing or still-born genius oil painting.

And, Lady Gaga, eat yer heart out:

Altogether now:

Hold a chicken in the air

Stick a deckchair up your nose

Buy a jumbo jet

And then bury all your clothes

Paint your left knee green

Then extract your wisdom teeth

Form a string quartet

And pretend your name is Keith

Skin yourself alive

Learn to speak Arapahoe

Climb inside a dog

And behead an eskimo

Eat a Renault Four with salami in your ears

Casserole your gran

Disembowel yourself with spears

Anorak

Posted: 12th, September 2013 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink