Organizers cancel artist's bid to film couples having sex

OSLO (AFP) - Organizers of an international music festival in Oslo forced a Korean artist who planned to film couples having sex inside a tent on the festival grounds to cancel the shoot at the last minute, media reported.

The artist, Shu Lea Cheang, installed the tent at the Quart music festival, which got underway on Monday, and had intended to start filming couples who volunteered to have sex inside it on Tuesday in a fictive search for people to star in a imaginary pornographic movie called "Fluid", Staale Stenslie, the program chief of Norway's National Touring Exhibitions told AFP.

Cheang's film of the search was to be shown at the Soerlandet Kunstmuseum, an art museum in the southern Norwegian town of Kristiansand.

But the National Touring Exhibitions must have gotten cold feet over the project because they forced Cheang to cancel it at the last minute amid concerns that the shoot could violate Norwegian decency laws.

Stenslie had earlier said the project was "far from pornography".

"It's about humanity, nakedness and intimacy. Shu Lea is a very serious and respected artist," he insisted.

"This is a society-critical exhibit. It's commentary on how we have handled the AIDS epidemic, and it's a bridge between popular culture and art," Stenslie said.

The music festival did however feature sex on stage.

A young couple attending a Cumshots concert on Tuesday was called up by the lead singer in the middle of the concert, where they had sex on stage to the crowd's applause, as the band played on.