Controversial artist to perform Greek ritual in Copenhagen while naked

Tourists visiting the Gefion Fountain tomorrow may see more horn than bull

Nov 13, 2014

At around 1pm tomorrow, tourists passing the Gefion Fountain located in the corner of Churchillparken near Maersk's headquarters, might see some sights and sounds of Copenhagen they hadn't bargained for.

Controversial artist Uwe Max Jensen has revealed he intends to reinact the Greek Bronze Age ritual of bull-leaping (taurokathapsia in Greek) with a modern twist by jumping over the bull sculptures at the Gefion Fountain. And he will be doing so, as anyone familiar with his work will have been able to tell you, butt-naked.

”The coins at the bottom of the fountain will be thrown to the crowd, and then he will climb up onto the Gefion Fountain's sculpture group consisting of the Norse God of fertility Gefion and the four bulls,” a press release on the artist's blog spot Den Frie revealed.

”Afterwards, Uwe Max Jensen will leap over the backs of each bull before completing his take on the ritual by climbing up the sculpture of Gefion.”

READ MORE: Naked happening ends in fiasco and arrest

First bull-leaping Cavling cadidate?
Bull-leaping – which took place most notably in the palace in Knossos in Crete – involves the person running up to the bull and grabbing the bull by the horns. The bull then violently jerks its neck upwards, propelling the leaper into the air where somersaults and other acrobatic skills can be performed.

Jensen's decision to 'grab the bull by the horns' comes just days after he was put forward by the Danish journalism association Dansk Journalistforbund (DJ) as a candidate for the nation's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, the Cavling Award.

Jensen was chosen because of his ”unorthodox and persistent coverage over several months of embarrassing fundamental aspects of the controversial Swedish street artist Dan Park and the Swedish authorities' attempts to imprison him and destroy his artistic-political subject matter”, according to a DJ press release.

The artist – who has gained notoriety for several controversial artistic happenings including reinacting the decapitation of the Little Mermaid while naked – was arrested earlier this year after trying to walk butt-naked through the streets of Viborg holding a bible and a koran in a happening entitled ’Black white Christian Muslim united'.

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