They filmed their own sex tape, then turned it into an art exhibit
The art of intimacy: how Batten and Kamp turn their relationship into sculpture
Kiwi artists Alexandra Batten and Daniel Kamp, recently returned to Hong Kong, explain why the city ‘is like crack’ to them
One would think the most common place to find a sex tape these days is buried in the untraceable corners of the dark web. But artists Alexandra Batten and Daniel Kamp had a different idea about what to do with their own amorous film: they saved it on a USB drive and encased it in a transparent glass coffee table. Then they exhibited it.
Despite the performative nature of the work – they filmed the tape specifically for the show – there’s no real divide between collaborators and couple Batten and Kamp and their creations. Beyond two bodies, they are a merging of mind, heart and soul.
“It really is impossible to unstitch Batten and Kamp from Ali and Dan and our relationship,” says Batten.
We’re speaking at their new, 1,800 sq ft studio in Wong Chuk Hang, where the couple are preparing for a residency in Turkey.
Batten, 35, and Kamp, 34, don’t blur boundaries so much as treat them as suggestions. With Sex Tape (2023), they explore the murky dichotomy between the public and private realms. The transparency of the glass contends with the shrouded inaccessibility of the USB drive that holds the sex tape, while the intimate nature of the film’s content is at the precipice of being discovered by viewers at any given time. In many ways, it’s emblematic of their practice as they produce pieces that confront the limits and fallacies of our own perception, often through subtle subversion and visual trickery.
Next to Sex Tape are Bad Boy (2023) and Mean Girl (2023): two black, prickly chairs with steel bases and frames. The first is elongated and phallic, the second horizontal and receptacle-like. The black material? Bird spikes, the rubbery strips typically placed above doorways to prevent nesting. They’re soft, so as not to harm the creatures.
The BDSM-adjacent aesthetic belies gentler warmth. Like Batten and Kamp, who at first glance seem sharp, edgy and intimidatingly cool, the work, once engaged with, reveals an affectionate, nurturing dimension.
