If you’re one of those people who thinks Miranda July’s precious indie comedy Me and You and Everyone We Know is “performance art,” then you have plenty to learn this month at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. The venue is bringing New York’s most notorious performance artist (and Bjork’s boyfriend) Matthew Barney out here to the Midwest.

Barney is best known as the director of the Cremaster cycle (playing throughout the month at Siskel), a series of five films named after that muscle that controls the lowering of the male’s testes. This is more than a stunt: In each entry of the cycle, Barney conceptualizes a man’s sexual drive through the mesmerizing sculptures and choreography that fill his sets. In Cremaster 3, the only one I’ve seen, the Guggenheim Museum stands in for an erect penis, ending in a feverish orgasm that sends gooey goodness flying all over the structure. Seriously, I wouldn’t advertise performance art to college students unless I thought they could make “that’s what she said” jokes out of it.

Matthew Barney: Cremaster Returns!