Louis-Philippe Scoufaras: Read Me

INTERACTIVE READING PROJECT

A unique catalogue of texts that will be at Samis Bar in Athens, available for paid private readings by sex workers. This will take place from October 2024 for an undetermined period of time, certainly until 2025.

Samis is located near Victoria Square and has been around for more than 20 years. It operates as a bar that primarily hosts male sex workers, many of whom are migrants. These workers may hustle, work on-site in the dark room.

The project aims to participate in this existing system, by slightly shifting its modus operandi.

Louis-Philippe Scoufaras will build a catalogue of texts that will be available at the bar. Anyone can access this catalogue during Samis’s opening hours, from 11pm to 6am daily. Visitors can select a text they wish to have read to them and negotiate a price with a worker to do the reading. Once an agreement is reached, both parties will sign a guest board before heading to a private space where the reading will take place.

Contributors will be credited next to the text titles in the catalogue. The texts can originate from any language, as translations will be available in Greek, English and Arabic. They should be of reasonable length, akin to song lyrics, a poem, or a paragraph from a novel. There’s no strict word limit; longer or more complex texts can command higher prices.