January 1999
Beaconsfield Artworks (BAW) were invited to make interventionist work in Small Pleasures curated by artist Hayley Newman, that happened as part of Sensation at the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin.
BAW (David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin) created 3 works alluding to the moniker of the left-wing militant group, The Red Army Faction. The works responded to Sensation within the wider context of the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, the city of Berlin and contemporary German political history.
For Rise And Fall, BAW installed a suited figure of Erich Honecker that was hung by the feet from an elevated stairway, mirroring Marc Quinn’s suspended rubber self-portrait No Visible Means of Escape visible through archways from the next gallery space.
For Randy As Fuck, BAW installed a replica of Tracey Emin’s sculpture Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 – 1995. Dressed as Hamburger Bahnhof security guards, Crawforth and Siderfin performed general guard duties in the exhibition hall. They hired a young German couple, working in the Berlin pornographic industry, to enter the tent at specific times to have full-blown uncensored sex, their bodies only visible through the tent fabric in silhouette and via bodily sounds. The duration of the piece was dictated by their sexual climax after which they would unzip the tent, get dressed and blend back into the museum crowds.
For Random Automatic Fire BAW installed a stereo PA with one speaker at each end of the long gallery hall. Underneath each speaker an invigilators chair was placed and for a duration of 15 minutes each day two security guards (Crawforth & Siderfin) would sit with laptops that controlled audio triggers replicating high caliber semi-automatic rifle fire across the museum hall space – aimed at the opposite guard.
Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany. Live interventions within the exhibition Sensation.