This trailer depicts a public performance by Feel Good Cooperative that took place on 12 October 2023. That is Columbus Day, when various countries celebrate Christopher Columbus’ arrival in 1492in the region later called the Americas. More than a hundred visitors attended the street performance, following the members of the collective in a procession along the Via Cristoforo Colombo in Rome. This street is in the EUR district, which was designed under Mussolini as the site for the world exhibition in 1942 (that never took place). It symbolised fascism, urban power and colonial expansion. Today, the district is also known for sex work. The members of Feel Good Cooperative use the neoclassical columns and architecture as the setting for a series of actions. They claim the public space in a play of light and shadow, striptease and body language. “We boldly flaunted our asses. The same bodies that are usually harassed by the police and forced out of sight,” the collective declare. The trailer shows how they use a historically charged area of Rome as a stage for visibility, protest and artistic expertise.

Feel Good Cooperative is an artistic collective founded by Pauline Curnier Jardin with the researcher and urban planner Serena Olcuire, the photographer and sex worker Alexandra Lopez and a group of Columbian transgender sex workers in Rome during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Initially, Curnier Jardin bought the sex workers’ drawings for the price of a ‘trick’, i.e. a sexual service. What began as an initiative to offer sex workers work and an income has grown into a long-term artistic collective. Curnier Jardin sees the sex workers as artists who possess a specific expertise of their own in their use of the body, light, make-up and costumes. Feel Good Cooperative is developing its own artistic practice encompassing performances and films, graphic works, sculptures and installations. Since it was founded, the cooperative’s work has been exhibited in Rome, Berlin, Genoa, Bonn, Cologne and New York.

“The subject of my work is not minorities, but the process of coming together, becoming a collective and developing shared expertise,” Curnier Jardin says.

Credits:
Starring: Alexandra Lopez, Juiliana Mira, Gilda Star, Barby de Martinez, Morop'sillita Manuela, Paola Drumont, Romolo Gusmaroli, Balthazar Haberkorn, Fabio Ramiccia, Vito Felice Lenobi, Markus Waitschacher, Paolo Scarfo, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Elisa Giuliano, Serena Olcuire
Script: Pauline Curnier Jardin and Elisa Giuliano
Costume Designer and Make-up: Rachel Garcia
1st Assistant and Project Manager: Martina Silvi
Choreography: Elisa Giuliano
Cameras: Anouk Chambaz, Claudia Sicuranza, Alice Monneret
Documentation: Serena Olcuire
Technical Manager: Colin Ledoux
Intern: Romolo Gusmaroli
Casting: Alexandra Lopez and Colin Ledoux
Costume Designer Assistant: Alice Monneret and Romolo Gusmaroli
Sound Recordist: Alessandra Salvatori
Stage Photographer: Angela Scamarcio
Catering: Romolo Gusmaroli, Alice Monneret, Romolo Gusmaroli
Editing: Alice Monneret
Credits: HIT
Special thanks: Rachel Garcia, Victoir Baquié Molinier and Sohuta for the materials donated for the costumes, Amparo e Mariana Prado Freire Romalho, Veronika
Čechová, Jindřich Chalupecký Society and the roman audience who came this night
Courtesy of the artist, Feel Good Cooperative, ChertLüdde (Berlin) and Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam)
The performance has been co-realized by LOCALES as part of If Body 2023, and Jindřich Chalupecký Society, Prague City Gallery (CZ)