Sam Bompas has found the G-Spot. And he is playing it.
If you’re wondering what that looks like, the G-Spot is actually a 1.5-foot tall, six-petaled upside-down tulip with an attached theremin. It’s the final surprise in a Tunnel of Love at the Museum of Sex, where Sam Bompas and his partner-in-crime Harry Parr (together, UK duo Bompas & Parr) have created an interactive tits-and-ass-and-penis-filled exhibit.
Titled Funland, the exhibit includes the mirrored labyrinth where you hunt for the G-Spot, followed by a bounce house of breasts, a race course featuring dicks instead of horses, and a rock climbing route of various orifices and appendages.
“You’ve just entered to the erotic Funland,” Sam says in a deep announcer’s voice. He is decidedly the gregarious one of the two, wearing Kenzo pants under a dapper blazer. “Come through here,” he directs, leading us out of the mirrored labyrinth, “And enter Jump for Joy… the bouncy castle of breasts.”
It is exactly what it sounds like: A small entrance leads to a bounce house with various giant mounds with accentuated nipples. “Enjoy the areolas,” an attendant says. This is where we find Harry, decked out in Opening Ceremony jeans, bouncing amongst giant breasts.
“It’s just joyful,” Sam says, “It’s one of those things we looked up and was like, ‘How come no one has done this before?’”
When you think about it, fairgrounds and festivals have always been sort of erotic; think peep shows, burlesque, and roller coasters. “The rides, with their white-knuckle offerings, enabled audiences to cling, touch, group, or embrace in the confines of an enclosed car of compartment,” professor Vanessa Toulmin at University of Sheffield writes in some exhibition copy.
Vanessa helped provide some black-and-white videos of fairgrounds of the past, screened alongside the carnie attractions. You can view gravity rides where a woman’s skirt flies up, a circus man’s set which cuts to a homemade sex tape, and couples happily bouncing around on a rollercoaster, a man’s hand slowly inching his way around his date.
“Fairgrounds really provided a context for slightly transgressive behavior, like first date stuff, and we wanted that slight transgression in the museum,” Sam says. “We’re really trying to disrupt the museum experience.” So, after you view some pornographic material downstairs, come up to bounce around in a pile of boobs.
“Oh, quick dive in!” Sam exclaims, dragging me to a game where you throw balls into holes to move racing penises. It’s low-culture fun (and kitschy, ballsy humor) in a high-culture setting.
“Actually, what everyone wants to do is the fun, low-culture stuff,” Sam says when we finish the game (a third contestant won). “What I want is to give people stories for life. ‘Oh, I went to a bounce castle full of breasts… but it’s okay because it’s in a museum context and I was exploring the connection between fairgrounds and eroticism. You know I really thought about it.‘”
FUNLAND: Pleasures & Perils of the Erotic Fairground opens June 26, 2014.
MUSEUM OF SEX
233 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
If you’re wondering what that looks like, the G-Spot is actually a 1.5-foot tall, six-petaled upside-down tulip with an attached theremin. It’s the final surprise in a Tunnel of Love at the Museum of Sex, where Sam Bompas and his partner-in-crime Harry Parr (together, UK duo Bompas & Parr) have created an interactive tits-and-ass-and-penis-filled exhibit.
Titled Funland, the exhibit includes the mirrored labyrinth where you hunt for the G-Spot, followed by a bounce house of breasts, a race course featuring dicks instead of horses, and a rock climbing route of various orifices and appendages.
“You’ve just entered to the erotic Funland,” Sam says in a deep announcer’s voice. He is decidedly the gregarious one of the two, wearing Kenzo pants under a dapper blazer. “Come through here,” he directs, leading us out of the mirrored labyrinth, “And enter Jump for Joy… the bouncy castle of breasts.”
It is exactly what it sounds like: A small entrance leads to a bounce house with various giant mounds with accentuated nipples. “Enjoy the areolas,” an attendant says. This is where we find Harry, decked out in Opening Ceremony jeans, bouncing amongst giant breasts.
“It’s just joyful,” Sam says, “It’s one of those things we looked up and was like, ‘How come no one has done this before?’”
When you think about it, fairgrounds and festivals have always been sort of erotic; think peep shows, burlesque, and roller coasters. “The rides, with their white-knuckle offerings, enabled audiences to cling, touch, group, or embrace in the confines of an enclosed car of compartment,” professor Vanessa Toulmin at University of Sheffield writes in some exhibition copy.
Vanessa helped provide some black-and-white videos of fairgrounds of the past, screened alongside the carnie attractions. You can view gravity rides where a woman’s skirt flies up, a circus man’s set which cuts to a homemade sex tape, and couples happily bouncing around on a rollercoaster, a man’s hand slowly inching his way around his date.
“Fairgrounds really provided a context for slightly transgressive behavior, like first date stuff, and we wanted that slight transgression in the museum,” Sam says. “We’re really trying to disrupt the museum experience.” So, after you view some pornographic material downstairs, come up to bounce around in a pile of boobs.
“Oh, quick dive in!” Sam exclaims, dragging me to a game where you throw balls into holes to move racing penises. It’s low-culture fun (and kitschy, ballsy humor) in a high-culture setting.
“Actually, what everyone wants to do is the fun, low-culture stuff,” Sam says when we finish the game (a third contestant won). “What I want is to give people stories for life. ‘Oh, I went to a bounce castle full of breasts… but it’s okay because it’s in a museum context and I was exploring the connection between fairgrounds and eroticism. You know I really thought about it.‘”
FUNLAND: Pleasures & Perils of the Erotic Fairground opens June 26, 2014.
MUSEUM OF SEX
233 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016