HOLY CORNERS GOLF CLUB

by Gabriella Daris

ST. MARY’S CHURCH & GRAVEYARD
COLCHESTER ARTS CENTRE
Church St. Colchester, Essex CO1 1NF

Saturday 20th July 2013
7:30-8:30 PM

CAST

Coach: Beth Stephens

Holy Golf Players/Dominatrixes: Annie Sprinkle & the audience

Holy Corners/Submissives: Adriana Pegorer, Maria Prieto, Amen, Gabriella Daris.

Holy Chanting/Music: Maria Hofer with Tonkünstler Orchestra,Totentanz, 1947 & the performers.

Holy Waters/Projection: Gabriella Daris & Werner Nekes, Diana’s Dream, 2' Film loop, 2008. 

“What Kant grounded transcendentally, the affinity of knowledge and planning, which impressed the stamp of inescapable expediency on every aspect of bourgeois existence that was wholly rationalized, even in every breathing-space, Sade realized empirically more than a century before sport was conceived. The teams of modern sport, whose interaction is so precisely regulated that no member has any doubt about his role, and which provide a reserve for every player, have their exact counterpart in the sexual teams of Juliette, which employ every moment usefully, neglect no human orifice, and carry out every human function. Intensive, purposeful action prevails in sport as in all branches of mass culture, while the inadequately initiated spectator cannot divine the difference in the combinations, or the meaning of variations, by the arbitrarily determined rules.” (T. W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944).

Holy Corners Golf Club is an anthropomorphoerotic, mini golf course founded by Gabriella Daris. The architectonics of the Golf Club represent the voyeur’s distorted fantasy as this is being performed by way of athletic eroticism. At Holy Corners Golf Club submission and objectification are ultimately holy enactments towards a sexual sacredness. 

Like Michel Leiris’ account on bullfighting in his 'Mirror of Tauromachy,' Holy Corners Golf Club encourages an athletic earthy eroticism by aestheticizing the sport of golf turning it into fine art and reminding us, that all sports could be re-played as sex sports. A corner is a solitary place, meditative, private and peaceful. For Gaston Bachelard, every corner “is a symbol of solitude for the imagination.” (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1958). One could also associate corners with punishment, repression, desire and escape; an entrance, an exit or a dead-end. The Holy Corners invite intercourses/interactions with the audience: the voyeurs turn into golf players. Females’ corners are the origins of the world and not only reflect, they become one with the void of the earth, where we all end up; their flagsticks stand as memento mori.
© Gabriella Daris, 2010-2013.