NAKed and acTIVe - Current Naktiv Project
This is a reminder that I'm still taking submissions for the Naktiv Naked Hiking book project. I'm particularly interested to hear from women, (I only have male writers so far, which is not unexpected, but variety is always good to encourage), and about groups of mixed tours of all kinds. Please feel free to cross-post this reminder far and wide.
The deadline is end of March 2013, more details here:
http://www.naktiv.net/projects/current.html
and I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Nude Year for 2013!
Paul, from Geneva, and I drove into Munich or 02:00, although the city was
quieter than during the day there was still a surprising amount of traffic
about. We parked and headed into the centre of town, past the Munich Opera
House, our intended destination, and on to Marienplatz. We fortuitously met
Rob, from Köln, at the entrance to a burger bar, and proceeded to meet up with
the others from our little entourage up at the central square. Horst Kehm,
admin of the
FKK-Freun.DE
website and Jürg. We made our way back to the meeting place, to find a huge
queue of people trailed along the street, so, being English, I queue-jumped to
the front. Once inside the "compounds", we were separated into two groups, and
given a small tin of body paint each. One held gold, the other red, body paint.
We'd come to take part in Spencer Tunick's naked installation celebrating the
start of the Munich Opera season, and focussing on Wagner's "The Ring", or, as
some Germans would have it: Das Ring Ding.
The swarms of people grew, until there were perhaps 1700 people, all waiting to
get naked in the centre of Munich city. We also met Johannes with his 20
year-old daughter, from Berlin. And Graham, a Spielplatz member who latched on
to our group.
Occassionally we were informed as to what was happening, but I could not
understand the shouted instructions from the loud-hailer being used, and do not
comprehend why Tunick doesn't use a modern PA system. This was the same
unintelligable garble we had to put up with during the, also very cool,
Stadion in Vienna
event.
After several hours of waiting for something to happen, and dawn beginning to
creep across the lightening sky, the red group received the order to strip and
paint. We all had our cameras out and were busy snapping mementoes of the
entertaining and highly unusual event as 800 naked people tried to cover
themselves, totally, in red body paint, just across the square from us.
Christine Madden, an Irish journalist working for a local German online
newspaper, who came to take part and interview people, was highly annoyed at
having listened to the "no camera" rule.
Red went first, then it was our turn, and we painted ourselves gold from the
small pots of metallic paint, getting help from others for bits we couldn't
reach, like our upper backs, or bits we'd missed, on our calves, or faces. The
paint had a very effective metallic effect. When our turn came to exit, we
walked out around the block, waving at a few solitary police cars and
pedestrians, to the main square, forming a giant gold human ring around the
central statue. Tunick took several photos, of us all standing and lying down
on the cobbles, then the red group filled the space in our centre. It was
entertaining listening to Tunick trying to organize everybody, from his raised
platform, by pointing down and shouting "you, move left, no, you, NO, YOU!"
Presumably he knew which person he was pointing at... The contrast of red and
gold people was very effective, the human shapes and colour flowed dynamically
around the statues and steps. This was Tunick's first use of colour with the
naked human body in his installations, and I can imagine him using it again -
the sharp colours created an intense contrast.
After all the waiting, it was all over too soon, and once we'd taken a couple
more photographs, we returned to the start point to get dressed, then into
Marienplatz for coffee and cake. It was amusing watching the Lederhosen +
Dirndl dressed locals watching us in our body paint, in particular the
red-painted people were very striking, even when dressed.
You can read more about the event, and see more photos, here: http://www.naktiv.net/events/spencer-tunick-munich-the-ring/index.html
Rich.
