Sex with GeenStijl Commenters to Bridge the Divide Between Left and Right

“I'm completely broken ... I'm paralysed by stress,” Sid Lukkassen whines on the telephone. Right at the beginning of KIRAC 23 – Honeypot, the far-right philosopher, whose novel De afrekening fantasises about violence against those who think differently, reveals himself as a spineless crybaby. The conversation was recorded after he voluntarily and fully knowingly took part in a film that turned out differently from what he had hoped. In the last shot in which he appears, he still stammers fearfully: “I don't want you to use this footage.” But he has reckoned without Stefan Ruitenbeek and his KIRAC team. Once they have sunk their teeth in, they do not let go.

KIRAC, or Keeping It Real Art Critics, began five years ago as an initiative by director Ruitenbeek, philosopher Kate Sinha and artist Tarik Sadouma. Initially it was a new form of art criticism — KIRAC received the incentive award of the Prize for Young Art Criticism in 2018 — but their films soon evolved into criticism of the art world in general. In a serial with an expanding cast, targets have included the Stedelijk Museum's funding, cancel culture and the subsidy structure of Dutch broadcasting in Hilversum.

GeenStijl

The current political climate in the arts gives KIRAC plenty of wind in its sails. The group opposes what it calls “the left-wing clique” and its excessive, creativity-crushing correctness. KIRAC charges in cheerfully with studs showing, sometimes cutting corners and often crossing the bounds of good taste, but never unintelligently and at times very wittily. It also appeals to an audience beyond the usual art crowd, as was evident at last Friday's well-attended Honeypot try-out.

In Honeypot, KIRAC explores “the limits of sexuality”. By the standards of today's thirty-somethings, the beaver shots, erections and fucking on screen may indeed be intense, but generations of Dutch filmmakers would call it “functional nudity”. The instigator is 22-year-old philosophy student Jini, who wants to make contact with GeenStijl commenters and use sex to bridge the divide between left and right. She sees a potential doctoral research project in it.

KIRAC then pairs Jini with Lukkassen, winner of Forum voor Democratie's essay competition on sex and sublimation. The premise is already so bizarre that it makes you question the film's authenticity, but KIRAC, usually taken to be right-wing, creates further confusion by targeting an arch-conservative this time. The entire film could even be seen as subversive left-wing work. After all, the title refers to the computing term for a system deliberately left vulnerable in order to detect hackers and viruses. Jini as a sweet trap for the philosopher who rails against feminism, Muslims and the gay movement.

Sexploitation

The rendezvous takes place in an improvised boudoir in a borrowed apartment in Zandvoort. Sadouma plays a Muslim pimp hoping for a direct line to Forum leader “Big B”. He instructs Lukkassen to give Jini some jewellery to demonstrate his chivalry and pave the way for sex.

Anyone who goes along with such an over-the-top scenario deserves to be made a fool of as the “first among equals of the incels”. But Lukkassen proves to be a caricature of the worst kind, with an extraordinary lack of self-awareness to boot. In front of Sadouma, Ruitenbeek, an intern, two cameras and therefore potentially the entire world, he allows himself to be stripped, ridiculed and brutally rejected. Jini calls him “clumsy” and says “he doesn't deserve it”. Sadouma calls it a missed opportunity to reverse the polarisation of the Netherlands.

If you did not know Lukkassen really existed, you would think he was an actor. The scenes re-enacting his romantic history with a red-haired left-wing woman — played in part by Ruitenbeek in a wig — further blur the boundary between fact and fiction. So does the director's characteristically unctuous voice-over. Honeypot is a mixture of satire, gonzo and good old sexploitation, in which, incidentally, the exhibitionistic Jini is far from a passive victim.

In its twenty-third film, KIRAC once again does what it does well: provoke and make a serious point without allowing you to put your finger on exactly what that point is. In the current artistic climate, with its penchant for well-behaved unambiguity, that is a great asset, whatever you think of it morally or aesthetically.

KIRAC 23 – Honeypot: premiere on 27 October at De Balie, available online afterwards.