When performance artist Stephen Cohen tied a live rooster to his penis and danced around in front of a group of nuns by the Eiffel Tower, he thought he was making a powerful political statement.
French police did not agree, however, and promptly dragged him away.
He accused them of having ‘no understanding of what art is’, and today he can feel vindicated, despite being convicted of ‘sexual exhibitionism’, after he walked away from a Paris court a free man.
Last September Cohen appeared without warning in the Trocadero Plaza dressed in a corset, high heels, long red gloves and an elaborate feathered headdress with the rooster attached to his penis by a ribbon.
Against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, and under perplexed gaze of tourists, including a group of nuns, he danced for only a few moments before police pounced, dragging him across the plaza, rooster still attached.
Cohen’s lawyer told Reuters she was ‘relieved’ after the court chose not to impose any sentence yesterday.
‘This is a rather measured decision,’ said Agnès Tricoire. ‘In my opinion, this case should never have gone to court.’
In a March interview with Paris daily Le Figaro, Cohen said authorities had ‘no understanding of what art is, what performance is’.
‘If I’m found guilty … I will see it as a failure of French justice,’ said the 51-year-old, who has lived in France for about 10 years.
Prosecutors had asked for a €1,000 (£820; $1,400) fine.
Cohen is known for ‘interventions in the public realm’, according to his biography. Wearing an illuminated chandelier tutu, he once walked through a squatters’ camp in Johannesburg while it was being demolished.
The Paris performance was a reaction to an increasingly homophobic, xenophobic and anti-Semitic world, Cohen told the newspaper.
‘In showing the most intimate part of me, I’m saying: I’m male, I’m Jewish, I’m queer, I’m white,’ he said.
He said the rooster, named Franck, was not harmed during the performance. The animal was chosen ‘because it’s the emblem of France,’ he said.
He says he now plans to leave the country.