The one-on-one performance installation refers to Octave Mirbeau‘s novel The Torture Garden. The artists Otto Krause and Milan Loviška plant here a utopian potential of the urge for sexual liberty. They harvest sublimated violence, death and lust through the practice of total enclosure. In their own post - pornographic approach they oppose the superficial societal self-exposure and display with the creation of intimacy and eroticism, which are the subjects of passion and poetic contemplation. Their „hortus conclusus,“ draped in latex, is a utopian setting. It is a simulation that starts in the womb and continues through the skin to the point of ‚stepping out of the world‘. The installation is adaptable for diverse indoor and outdoor environments.

Concept / Artist's book: Otto Krause
Creation / Performance: Otto Krause, Milan Loviška
Music (Version I. & II.): voice - Curtis McDonald / violin - Anneliese Müller / cello - Karin Fortin / recording - Lars Völkerling

A production of Territorium KV

Performances & exhibition:
Version I. 19.6. - 22.6. & 26.6. 2013, exhibition: 20.6. - 28.6. 2013 @ University of Applied Arts, Vienna
Version II. @ Konichiwa, bitches!, 2014, WUK, Vienna
Version III. @ Der blöde dritte Mittwoch, 2017, Rhiz, Vienna
Version IV. @ YUP Festival, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, 2022

The artist's book is in the Franklin Furnace Artists' Book Collection in New York.

Photo: Hartmund Erhardt, Bernhard Kleber & Peter Kainz 2013; Otto Krause 2014; Arnold Haberl 2017; Annika Weertz & Carlos Pohlmann 2022