Book Launch: The Pleasure Principle by René Habermacher

On Wednesday, September 17th, 8:00pm Hyper Hypo and Arsenale invite you to the book launch and exhibition of The Pleasure Principle by René Habermacher.

The story behind the book is as audacious as the content within. In August 2024, artist Theodore Psychoyos restored a traditional fishing boat with the idea of offering a workout to the residents of Anafi. To bring this vision to life, Habermacher and Antoine Asseraf recruited volunteers for the boat’s maiden voyage — through a decidedly unconventional casting (Can they do the Macarena? What is the distance between their nipples?). The final crew: six seamen, one captain, and one photographer. On August 19th, 2024, under the command of Captain Theodore, they set sail into a hot Aegean morning.

The Pleasure Principle chronicles this surreal and spirited undertaking with photographs in both color and silver/black duotone. The book also features an essay by art historian Savannah Sather Marquardt (Sea Without Shore), irreverent commentary by the Hallouminatis (Thus Spoke Zarapoustra!), and contributions from seven contemporary artists in the form of “Shrines to Pleasure.” The result is a playful, poetic, and provocative meditation on ritual, community, and delight.

The evening also inaugurates an exhibition of photographs and artworks from The Pleasure Principle. It features photographic prints of the seven “Shrines to Pleasure”, created in dialogue between René Habermacher and artists Lynsey Peisinger, Diane Alexandre, Niko Rupllem, Victoria Bartlett, Nikos Yfantis, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, and Louis Philippe Scoufaras. The exhibition also shows three original works by Victoria Bartlett, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, and Nikos Yfantis.

To mark the launch, René Habermacher will be in conversation with Savannah Sather Marquardt, offering insights into the voyage, the book, and its cultural references.

René Habermacher is a Swiss-born and German-educated visual artist based between Athens and Paris, with a deep connection to Greek culture. His multidisciplinary work explores gender, identity, heritage, and myth-building. Recognised as one of the top ten photographers of his generation, his work was featured in Coming Into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast. He famously lensed Naomi Campbell as Athena, Marina Abramović as Maria Callas, and developed a fiction series with HBO Max. His recent exhibition and book, NEW DIGS, focused on ancient boundary markers — herms — challenging Eurocentric ideas of race and gender through archaeology, art, and critical narrative.

Savannah Sather Marquardt is an art historian, archaeologist, and writer in the History of Art department at Yale University. Her work combines genres, intertwining academic prose and myth to trouble the notion of scholarly objectivity. Through both research and art writing, Savannah is committed to crafting more expansive, more inclusive, and stranger visions of the ancient Mediterranean, producing stories about the past upon which it is possible to build more humane futures. Her research is supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, il Centro per la Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali “La Capraia,” and the American School for Classical Studies in Athens.