Maria F Dolores & Sofia Dona
Motorcycle Cruisers: the intimacy of strangers, 2024
Print on canvas 300 cm x 400 cm
Photograph shooting and editing: Lila Efraimidou
Special thanks: Irina Vosgerau, Tina Voreadi, Danae Kostourou, Maria Petridi, Maria Sideri and Onassis AiR for the equipment.

Among the sorted trees of the garden we find a motorcyclist lying next to her leaning motorbike in a clearing. The motorcyclist is wearing a shirt that says “Lynn Margulis”. Biologist Lynn Margulis drew from her studies of bacteria the concept of the intimacy of strangers as the most fundamental practice of becoming-with each other in Earth's history. Elsewhere in the garden another motorcyclist is nursing a baby, while around her are books such as 'Cruising Utopia' and 'Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition'. Both are wearing keffiyehs.

The installation is inspired by Alexis Bistika's Clearing (1993) and Annette Kennerley's Sex, Lies, Religion (1994). The presence of the machine in the garden alludes to the history of noisemakers mentioned by Hartman. We listen to the deafening noise of the machines as a subversion of silence. Lying next to the motorcyclists we hear the rustling of leaves as the light passes between them. "Visible among the trees we claim a safe space of erotic intercourse and friendship."