Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Gifted Men
The three-channel film installation Gifted Men (2015, 67 min) deals with the
commercial distribution of semen in Denmark from the perspective of
anonymous donors.
Danish legislation allows for anonymous sperm donations, leading to
increasing fertility tourism. Sperm banks operate in a complex grey area on
several levels. The project is based on interviews with sperm donors and
clinic managers in Copenhagen, Odense and Aarhus. Special attention has
been given to issues relating to masculinity and fatherhood.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Artistic collaboration
In our artistic practice we share a common interest in contemporary social
phenomena, storytelling and history. Based on a previous collaboration on
electricity and electrical hypersensitivity (Fugitives from the Fields), Gifted
Men is a collaborative project.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Work(s) ethics, aesthetics and economics
from a donation perspective
Excerpt from Gifted Men concerned with work

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Introduction
Gifted Men is part of a long-term project featuring sperm donation practice
as a field of research, with part empirical, part speculative and part critical
aspects. A major conceptualisation has been to apply donorship/donation
as an artistic and critical model to all levels in production, distribution and
presentation.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

The double work(s)
The aesthetic concepts behind exhibition, work and works, as well as
donation and gift contain double meanings, even the concept of author,
creator and donor. Gifted Men is playing with this relation between work
(labour) and works (art objects).

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

The double work(s)
The most striking dierence between sperm donors and artists is the name
as a brand! Artworks receive and contain value in relation to their
authorship. Artworks should be identified to their artistic creators; life
works (children) should never be identified to their sperm originators.
Anonymous sperm donors act like blind creators.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

The double gift(s)
Sperm donation is described as a singular act containing rationalised
altruistic motifs a moment of good will and gift giving. In reality it is a
long-term and regular practice. The donors gift (in terms of talent) is
intertwined with his will to give it as a selfless gift (in terms of present).
The donors gift oscillates between being altruistic humanitarian on one
hand, and post-humanitarian on the other hand.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Sperm banks and museums:
places of work out and after work
Sperm banks solve biotechnological problems by selecting, collecting,
testing, freezing, and selling the gifts. They represent a brilliant market for
gifts, creating a semi-transparent interface between work(s) and gift(s),
transforming biological raw materials to processed goods.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Containment practices: from workers to works
The encapsulation in multiple containers, acts and operations is essential to
the business. Its most dominant marker is the cryogenic container,
operating as the physical container and symbolic guarantor of anonymity.
Sebastian Mohr (Assistant professor in educational sociology, Aarhus
University) has coined the term containment practices in relation to the
processes involved.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Win-win-win
The exhibition Donor Portraits, featuring Gifted Men and other selected
donated portraits from Kalmar museums collection, was an attempt to
portrait both unknown and known creators from very diverse domains:
from the museum archive and the donation booth.
Donation practice as a field of moving image research in Gifted Men as a
work of art, is itself being donated to the public.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Win-win-win
We, the creators, create our own market for art collecting
The work Gifted Men is not a source for income/revenue, but a gift.
Production and distribution costs are partly funded publicly.
We, the creators, and Gifted Men become inscribed in a growing range of
institutions and collections (usually described as represented), taking
control of self-selection.

Nils Agdler & Timo Menke

Donation as posthuman after work

Making a living: the future of work after work
An economy not based on human labour (work), but on becoming, being or
staying Gifted, a profiled posthuman product (works), a kind of workless
work, or literally a body of work for good gifts.

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