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Premiered at Jo Derbyshire's Loft Space
Liverpool, England
Femmes du Futur
One Man Show
Kofi Fosu

Ugly Beauty
Hypersexuality

Kofi Fosu Forson

“I made love to you last night. You were sitting in a hotel lounge in Hong Kong. I was reading “Flaubert’s Parrot” a continent away.”

Do men desire women for their vulva or do they aspire to read them as text? Introduce me to a man who lived his lover as novel or cinema and I’d be the first to tell you that the vulva should be removed from the commercial sense.

We’ve managed everything from cave paintings to stick-figure pornography. There isn’t a more true explanation for coitus than the need for sexual pleasure. What happens to the body when it’s prevented from enjoying such desirability due to illness or impotency?

Could there ever be a replacement for the body as it floats through time and space? Modern lovers will be quick to prove that much is desired in the stroking of the hair, continuous eye-contact, acquired smell of the lover’s body to embrace, foreplay and finally fit into each other with a romp.

If the body is deformed, as in an illness and it takes on different exaggerated and horrific physical forms; much attributed to a diagnosis, what then is beauty? How do we make that decision to name some one beautiful? Isn’t beauty a part of that conscientious element to recognize a quality in someone? Perhaps, it’s physical, spiritual or universal as in a smile?

Can we redeem beauty within the intellect? I personally believe beauty and intellect are traits of a rather exceptional people. With intellect comes imagination, color, Technicolor, hypersexuality and hyperrealism.

The figment of beauty which many can’t ever rationalize is in the dirt, the ugly. Indeterminably, the visceral is particularly filled with pangs, fear and lust. To commit to take a bite out of an apple is justified. The look in your eye and the thought on your mind as you bite into that apple is personal.

Beauty is madness. Beauty is the intellect. The ugly is beauty.

If and when the vulva is removed from the commercial sense, each and every one of us will be able to love as people, pets and animals.

At the moment love is the color of cholera.

Modern Artist Female
Sexuality and Identity

Kofi Fosu Forson

Originally, Georgia Okeefe/Alfred Stieglitz, Diego Riviera/Frida Kahlo, David Salle/ Karol Armitage, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, were couples involved in what one would cordially say defined the modern day soap opera between artist/couples.

Among Hollywood actors they’ve been given names like Brangelina and Beniffer. The modern day artist female was always identified as an eccentric, inspired by lead characters in movies like Annie Hall to actual professional artists such as Cindy Sherman and Vanessa Beecroft.

Modern day artist as female isn’t given attention reminiscent of a cover model. Her self-care and attributes however pertinent to beauty, as in the interventions by Beecroft, isn’t held in the esteem of a television actress. She is in a sense not looked at as a sexual icon. The very art she presents is reflective not of her body, perhaps inspired by the body.

Liverpool performance artist, Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, does everything to dismiss the knowledge of the female artist’s body as transitory. Her physical body, taut and svelte, reflects a language made evident. However intuitive and graphic, it portrays a vision of damage, beauty and philosophy, circumscribed as a postmodernist inclusion within scientific, semiotic and neological relevancies.

Sexuality and identity in modern sense refers to pleasuring of the ego. Most of this is achieved through misuse of power, whether financial or sexual. Masculine and feminine represent ideals that are similar to both sexes.

Understandably, control is of the self. Women have incorporated it into their sexuality and identity. They see themselves as warranting a share of the masculine ideal. In doing so, women now present a dominant approach or a type of self-assertion.

The modern artist female can finally remove herself from the role of a person. She can therefore be female, sexual and present herself as identifiably commercial within the challenge of lovers and libido.

It’s always been this way. At the moment, for the woman, the job title of artist is no longer a curse.

Urban Landscape
Art as Philosophy

Kofi Fosu Forson

New York City as an urban landscape makes provisions for a proper schedule within the realms of art and philosophy.

Given the differing prospects for philosophy, Jewish as well as Black intellectualism refine what is secured as a city of many influences. They can be at times radical or driven by academia. With respect to the many colleges and universities that define New York City, the common man and his willingness to have an opinion on a variety of topics, whether at a bar or a cocktail party is an example of the modern day thinker and peruser.

The evolution of the artist in a city like New York, giving much deserved honor to the flamboyant Warhol-inspired 1980’s, stemmed from an art community. Perhaps one studied at The Metropolitan Museum of Art or S.V.A. and the public high schools that devoted attention to literature, music and art.

The East Village defined the bohemian culture. Art was significantly a means of existence and financially it was affordable. Despite the disillusionment that framed the minds of many, it was acceptable to be an artist.

Art and philosophy stems from a psychology that defines the individual. It is best addressed as a societal and emotional disease. Much of this can be attributed to advertisement, pressure among peers, personal evolution and sexual management.

Disease can also be devalued in persona, hybridism, biochemistry and lineage. Those that are body conscious are forced to maintain habits they can’t keep. Overall health is a factor in every sense of maneuverability.

Psychosexually, heterosexuals and homosexuals encourage a lifestyle dependent upon decisions made driven by the libido. This stretches from vernacular to the eventual partners they form a relationship.

In the given modern day, sexuality has undertaken a guaranteed attempt at satisfying the ego, more so than replenishing the need for love.

The artist as a philosopher is then free to manufacture a quantitative and qualified understanding of universality.

Technology and Urban Environment
Transvoyeur/Media Noche Intervention

Kofi Fosu Forson

The video intervention Gender, Art, Space & Architecture based on the co-effort by Transvoyeur and Media Noche in Spanish Harlem’s White Park was an exercise in technology interacting with the urban landscape.

Much is attributed to the gentrification of Harlem. Spanish Harlem has envisioned a sensibility bordering modernity within the landscape. As an urban environment it justifies the presence given by Media Noche. With respect to its dedication towards media/technology and video art, Media Noche is the link between an abandoned people and the progress needed in the articulation and intellectualizing of urban planning.

Transvoyeur as a cultural initiative prepares the dialogue and conference of art between a variety of artists in countries around Europe and State side. Its founder Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney has placed herself at the core of varying policies that affect the maneuverability of the discourse between artists in Liverpool and elsewhere.

The intent of curators like Gaynor and Jo Derbyshire, also present in Liverpool, her When The City Speaks… is a cultural trail through every major city and its influence given its history and locale, eventually defines with fine art, music and text, the originality of each and every individual.

Kofi Fosu and Daiva Gauryte were the artists featured in this exchange program. Kofi is a displaced artist from Ghana living in New York and Daiva, currently residing in Liverpool, originally from Lithuania. The international relevance of this project echoed through the stark streets of this neighborhood. White Park is a stream of solid white including the wall on which the video was shown.

Technologically, it affected the solidity of the environment giving it an intended jolt of spontaneity. The video itself is a necessary mark, intercepting on the logic found in the evening. Such is the celebration of modern language. The quality with which the video was edited points at originality, by standard allowing for features such as multiplicity of color, capturing phrases in text with familiar font and a unique use of sound.

It’s a brilliant exercise in the use of modern technology and how given its use can lay claim on societal semiotics and urban environment. This intervention at White Park promotes an international dialogue and the celebration of culture and language.

White Park Intervention
(Liverpool/New York Exchange Programme)

Kofi Fosu Forson

We debuted at White Park last night (Oct 13, 2007) on 106th street. It was the culmination of the Liverpool/New York exchange programme curated by Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney featuring Daiva Gauryte and myself, Kofi Fosu.

The exchange programme appropriately titled Gender, Space, Art and Architecture began this summer of 2007. Daiva and I established this project all in cyber space. Week after week for ten weeks, she and I responded to captions set aside by the curator, Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney. They featured topics on everything from Identity to Societal Semiotics and Urban Environment.

My impression was that it helped me evaluate the difference between the person and the artist. Something I’ve worked with all of my practice. Only this time in doing so, I had a partner to achieve the very goals we were both assigned to do.

I walked into Media Noche with Judith and her two friends gathered, Antonia, a painter and video artist from Mexico and Ursula, a performance artist I believe from Austria. I sat among them and enjoyed a nice conversation about time and how it prevents us from fulfilling all of our dreams.

Judith's friend, Freddy and I helped pack up for the very brief drive to White Park. At the park, Judith, Freddy and I set up. We were then ready. A white wall stood in the middle of the rather spacious park.

It was a Saturday evening and there were several people gathered in what was a spectacular setting. Our spirits were livened when the video lit up the wall as we stood in the dark with the street lights offering ample lighting. Judith's impression of the whole evening was that it was an intervention. The whole purpose was to stand by the fence watching the video, inspiring people to do the same. We attracted the casual onlookers and were ready with flyers with information about the project.

One gentleman was apparently very curious. He had been to England and made a stop in Liverpool. His curiosity led him to ask me questions concerning my personal philosophy within the concept of Gender, Space, Art & Architecture. He was smart. We had a nice chat. He further questioned me on my opinion on race. He felt I was smarting quite a bit. I let him know about the prospects of lineage and hybridism...And how that qualifies me individualistically, much the same for him. We said our good-byes, not before I gave him my business card.

It was a brisk evening. We labored around and watched as people stopped to look. All the while, the chemistry between Judith and me was sound. We were thrilled by the project as it was evolving before our eyes. The night was somewhat enchanting. Given the location and its mystery there was a feeling of a high percentage in my heart. It was crucial to have seen the video in a public space bringing to mind Gaynor’s theory of Architecture and identity.

As a New Yorker, I belonged to this setting which defied nature and as a park it was much like a physical space of whiteness. The sight of the video as it improved from the introductions to the hyper-panic images of Liverpool and New York, all the way through to the captions of me, Kofi Fosu and Daiva Gauryte talking about the project, with the end product being the art work featured in the programme, was a spectacle to the eye. To stand and watch it as it evolved was magnificent.

Certainly our (Media Noche/Transvoyeur) intervention at White Park was captured on video. Considering the feeling it evoked, judging by the mood and temperature, color of night, that feeling of Saturday night, it made it worthwhile.

Glueckwuensche an eine Mid-Life Crisis wiegende Frau

Kofi Fosu Forson

(Translation by Elena Federici)

Verbrenne diese Kerzen
An einem Tag, Gesichtsmaske tragend.

Es ist das Zusammenstroemen
Welches eine Auffuehrung ausmacht,
Wie in der Ehe, gestuetzt
Auf ihrem Ruecken,
gebrauched

Alter, wie Kaese,
Fuehlt die Bisse der Ratten
anknabbern.

Verbrenne diese Kerzen
an einem Tag, Gesichtsmasken tragend,
ansonsten warte auf den Tag
an dem das Einzige was du hoerst:

Sex ist besser
wenn Kinder Pferde reiten
viele meilen entfernt.

Liebe in einem Hotel,
Warm mit Liebe, warm mit Liebe.

In einer viel zu anstaendigen Welt
Kerzen (aus) blasen wird trivial
Sowie Eichhoernchen mit Eicheln fuettern
Wenn alles was du jemals braeuchtest
Ist dass jemand sagt:

Ich liebe dich.

Britney Spears:
White Turmoil

Kofi Fosu Forson

The origin of an idea manifests itself into something larger than life. Such was the modus operandi in the Clinton nineties. Seattle originated a form of rock’n roll called “grunge.” There had to have been a resolution for that other form of music, pop. It came in the rendering of a young and quite sexy girl named Britney Spears.

Legend has it that magazines like Barely Legal were popularized around the success of Miss Spears. Fair to say Britney is the God Mother to every sixteen year old during this time who wore make-up and had a certain urge for promiscuity.

What was the original idea? Inevitably society turned the tide towards the marketing of much younger professionals. The president of Black Book was in his early twenties. Beauty Bar located on the edge of the East Village in New York previously had a more mature crowd. As if by some intervention, the younger set from New York University and other local colleges made their way into this establishment filling the space with exuberance not recognized before.

Heaven, a café across the street from Baruch College, allowed teenagers from Unice high school to smoke alongside older men. Symptomatically, this was a continuation of gender politics from decades before. Britney Spears was then a poster child for the burgeoning demographic of young women curious about sexuality.

Miss Spears has since seen her share of sensationalism from kissing Madonna on the lips, termed as softly erotic, to her music videos which always push the envelope. After giving birth and raising two children, she has fallen into a dimension best described as disillusioned.

What this certifies is the plurality of money and sex. The Bush era has allowed a proliferation of a cannoned disaster.

The white female in her reasons of turmoil has revamped a psychology where sex is a means of necessity not a matter of contentment. It has brought about a mélange of sexual proclivities, which in turn reflects upon urban violence and underscores reasons for war.

To reinvent Britney Spears as a pop star, she needs a yogi to reposition her thoughts and aura much the same way each one of us must examine our hearts and minds and invest in the common link:

Deconstruction of the ego!

Modern Love
Postmodernist Ideology

Kofi Fosu Forson

Some would identify with Daniel Day Lewis’ character in Stars and Bars as a true romantic figure. That the Cohen Brothers painted a picture of a dry cinematic hue all adds to the tremor in the heart of the 1980’s as a romantic time.

Choose Me, directed by Alan Rudolph, with its passion for music, dialogue and cinematography is a clever example of modern love. David Bowie is quoted in a song with the very title that “Don’t wanna fall for Modern Love.” I personally feel that Bowie’s music is equivalent of sexual defiance. As a discography, it’s actually the most essential recognition of love and angst in the modern age.

In the current age of celebrity, where actors such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in the public eye, the modern lover is concerned more with the body as an entity and with money as a source of fulfillment.

An increase in cyber porn and dating sites nullifies any notion of modern love. It’s a hard reality where the purpose is to match personalities based on official reasons not chemistry. This then draws the lowest common denominator where partners are forced to meet sexual demands, eliminating the realm of individual intellect and philosophy.

However said, cyberspace creates a world where people exist in that very intellect and a foundation for love. This is done not as a means where cyberspace represents a web-oriented universe. It’s more so a matter of communication which is encouraged by modern technology.

Modern love in the postmodernist ideology is conscientious. As always, money hastens the connection between two different parties whether they exist in the same country or internationally. Self-love and individual evolvement are of the essence.

Centeredness has all the bearings in courage, confidence and stature. It allows an ability to live a life of love; as in I am sex. I make love. I am love. This then becomes a matter of metaphors. To exist in a literal habit makes little room for what else could be found in the universe or cyberspace.

The difference then is to be original or to commit the gravest sin of imitation. Love doesn’t exist in copy. It does in clay, the origin of man.

White Turmoil

Inspiration: Tamar Silberman

Lady Lilith
A History of Flesh

Kofi Fosu Forson

Love, the damage in every soul! Blessed thing of beauty, we succumb. If goddess, a mountain to climb, from her calves, through to her sexual cavity to touch at teat, embracing the fortune of her face.

Overcoming, bearer of thorns, pricked at skin; buried a death, beginning again. Woman, seduce me! Take this misery, make love of it. Swelter in this cold heat. Divine bosom, I rest my head, listening.

Luna Rose, singing, blues and bloods. House-mother, her body scent, fresh from sand, water and peppermint leaves. Blood sister, tame the female other, and bring her closer to cup. Buffalo girl, lift your arms, wrap it around. Give love in decadent desire. Teach us a dance, sacred dance. Our bodies become one with love by making love.

Devour! Seduce me, sister! Seduce me with your body alone. Take me into trouble. Let us walk through men. I am man. You are the reason for every man. Ravish! Fall onto bed, make these walls remember. Lover! What man doesn’t aspire? Keep them hidden. Save this love for eternity.

Lilith, female, illustrious she, we make love. Tug at hair, your crowning glory, motherly pubis. Celebrated lust, bring to bear potential sin. Fathom a room of lovers brought about by ecstasy, reaching unmentionable moments of pleasure. Imagine at its center, your body sprawled. Male, female reaching to touch! Sense the arousal, causing immediate joy. Intensity, constant stimulation rendered in absolute rapture.

Lovemaking, birth of light, ascending into a holier light! Let the dry wind blow. City streets fill with petals. People gather around, cherishing a new profound love, a woman of sun and moon, fasting, beckoning… becoming Cherie Amour!

Gorilla Head
Mad Men/Strong Pulls

Kofi Fosu Forson


The strongest of men are those who tug at and pull!

In essence they are driven by gravity in its most grave circumstances. This can be found somehow in the lives of artists and politicians. History reminds us of names like Mussolini and Van Gogh.

Madness is an art within itself. There is however a stigma. An acquaintance was quoted as saying, “Artists aren’t always mad.” But they are. Some attract the attention of beautiful women. Jessica Lange, the Hollywood actress, is known for attracting brilliant mad men.

Is there a correlation between madness and brilliance? As with everything, talent need be cultivated. A research on Charles Bukowski caused me to describe him as a gorilla walking the streets of Los Angeles. It inspired my poem “Gorilla Head.” In which I said...

“Women form like butterflies around gorilla heads lingering hot panties.”

The head of a gorilla therefore signifies the image of an artist as a mad man. As with madness, mania and despondency are the two polar points which define the persona. Given the evolution of a person, the artist is bound to border magnificence as in music, fine art and literature.

How then do women appreciate or not the presence of the artist as a mad man? It is best qualified as an understanding of love, from which we derive lust, sex and existence. The artist knows love. The artist as a mad man exists in love. He benefits as he finds love in his art, self-image and the female.

Mad men as artists are possessed. They are possessed by themselves, spiritually and sexually. For some they need to find an understanding of this possession. The only resolve is to continuously feed their angst for sex. Others, through chastity, prolong the intensity and craving for sex.

In order for most humans to reach the celebrated pinnacle of ecstasy, they need to define for themselves the meaning of love and the acceptance of a higher power. Meaning we are governed by one spirit.

The artist is possessed by a thousand more.

Artist/Surgeon
(Philosophy of Bones)

Kofi Fosu Forson

Straight-boned or amputee, philosophy as a skeletal structure serves as a foundation for art. Science therefore is much the contrast. Evenly, both forms refer to a replication of order/disorder.

What are the means for science and art to engage in an ongoing dialogue? Given the wherewithal, how does an artist maintain a sense of originality without conforming to the availability of technology?

Science spearheads a cause to perhaps evolve in a totally different way from art. Is there an agreeable advantage? A recent conversation with a surgeon quoted him as saying… “Art is more complex.”

I then draw the conclusion that an artist exists eternally. Surgeons emerge out of an official vantage point. This example proves the element which defines the artist at work and the surgeon in his practice.

Inspiration is dominant. In the artist, there’s a constant source of definition, as in the muse. It generates wisdom. This then leads to an idea which begets a procedure. The actual interpretation of the idea brings us back to order and disorder.

Fair to say, the surgeon manipulates time and space much the same way an artist does. Only he exists in that very moment not giving much care to outside influences.

Whereas time and space for the artist during performance is eternal, the surgeon concentrates on time.

Art as science fails to imply accordance.

Science as art is more so applicable with reason.