From a glass room placed in city centers, Verhoeven interacts with users of online dating apps like Grindr and Tinder about the nature of intimacy in our era, and asks them to visit him to satisfy his non-sexual desires. He proposes, for example, to wash their hair, to sing together in the shower, or to hold hands for an hour. Verhoeven’s life and search for connection is visible to everyone for 10 days, 24/7. The new public space, the internet, is made visible in the analogue public domain, the street. Digital becomes material. The screen of Verhoevens phone is constantly projected on a large screen; the chats can be read by everyone, but have been made anonymous: you cannot identify the person chatting with him.

With the emergence of dating apps such as Grindr and Tinder, a new revolution is underway: a date is available ‘on demand’. If we know how to sell ourselves, with the right slogan and right selfie, we have access to an endless supply of available men and women. Are we allowing the apps to seduce us into consuming each other’s attention and sexual potential or do they simply enable us to connect with each other much faster, while retaining the level of interaction?

One of the consequences of the phenomenon is the gradual disappearance of the Queer Village, places where homosexuals have been meeting since the 70s, and which as a result revealed deviating sexual preferences in the hetero-normative public space. For many homosexuals, the dating apps are becoming the most obvious meeting place. The ‘sexual deviant’, the ‘other’, has a distinct place in the online world. Does this also mean ‘queerness’ will be less visible on the street of the future?

For a ten-day period, Verhoeven goes in search of answers together with the people he meets. His findings are posted daily on a public blog, simultaneously providing the archive and contextualization of the work.