Artist projecting Grindr chats with unsuspecting men onto public street
An artist is under fire for projecting his Grindr chats with unsuspecting men onto a wall in a public street.
Berlin-based artist Dries Verhoeven is streaming conversations with men onto the side of a building in a busy public square in the city – on the corner of Oranienstrasse and Mariannenstrasse.
The stunt is part of art project ‘Wanna Play’, which sees Mr Verhoeven flirting with men and inviting them to perform non-sexual activities, including making pancakes, playing chess, and helping him shave his beard.
He said: “I see this container as a research laboratory in which I will investigate the degree to which the internet can serve as a new meeting point.
“I will play chess with them, have breakfast, make pancakes, trim nails, we’ll shave one another or read to one another from our favourite books.”
However, several users of the hookup app have reacted with anger when they found that their seemingly-private flirty conversations were broadcast for the entire world to see – and some fear that it could lead to people being outed.
One distraught user wrote: “[I get to the square] and realize that our Grindr conversation has been projected onto the wall for everyone to see.
“My name, my photos, the entire private conversation publicly on display. My ex-boyfriend saw it as he by chance was in the neighbourhood.
“There is no anonymity in this act and I feel so violated.I am livid. I have never experience anger like this before
“[Verhoeven] is opening up Grindr for the sake of ‘art’ and in doing so endangering people in the process.
“At no point did he have my consent or notify me that he would be doing anything of the sort.”
A Grindr spokesperson told PinkNews: “While Grindr support the arts, what Dries Verhoeven is doing by luring Grindr users under false pretenses is entrapment.
“This is an invasion of user privacy and a potential safety issue. We encourage other users to report his profile by using the ‘flag’ function on our app, so we can take action to ban the user. Together, we will work to keep these users out of our Grindr community.”
Users are currently planning to organise a protest against the piece.
