here's a blog entry i wrote about the recent San Diego stop of the Sex Worker's Art Show, it is very cursory, but is related to Florian Cramer's essay Sodom Blogging, in that it looks at the way the Sex Worker Art Show tries to "humanize" Sex Workers. It also discusses a bit of local struggle going on in san diego about sex positive spaces .
I'm curious what other people on this list think of the Sex Worker Art Show, if you've seen it? The original article, with links and photos, is here: http://technotrannyslut.com/2008/01/23/sex-work-in-art-logic-and-passion/ Sex Work in Art: Logic and Passion The Sex Worker Art Show was amazing! If you didn’t catch the San Diego show this year, it should be back next year so don’t miss it! If its coming to your town, check it out. Wow. I was so inspired by the performances. The show opened with a hilarious introduction from the Rubber Rose, who organized the show at Brick by Brick. The explained how they have been receiving serious harassment from the SDPD and the City of San Diego regarding what they can and cannot do in their space. Apparently they’re going to have to raise thousands of dollars for permits just to have music in their space, dancing, dj’s, anything. They’ll have to raise still thousands more to get a burlesque license, bu until then they can’t have any live displays of a long list of body parts including “female breasts, the anus, the perenium” and acts such as “sex, normal or perverted”. They demonstrated all of this for us with two willing blow up dolls, J and D, and had the list read in a hot sexy voice by a Rubber Rose volunteer. Then the show began. Kirk Read kicked it off with a spoken word piece. Then Dirty Martini did her amazing performance entitled Patriot Act, which incorporated sexy stripping with hilarious political critique of the climate of jingoistic patriotism in the US. It’s very clear to all of us who saw it what she thinks of the Patriot Act, but I don’t want to give away all the goodness for people who haven’t seen it yet. Dirty Martini is amazing. Her stage presence is awesome. I love that the Sex Worker Art Show is made up of people with lots of different body sizes, shapes and colors and people with various sexualities. The Sex industry is clearly made up of a wide variety of people, and its great to see them having the space for their own expression in this show. The show continued with Lorelei Lee showing photography and reading a poem. The poem was a lot of personal narrative about working in the sex industry, but I felt that it was mostly about how difficult it is. The World Famous *Bob* did a spoken word piece before stripping to a surprising but awesome piece of music. I enjoyed both of these pieces a lot. I actually felt seriously endeared to both of them after their pieces, which were personal and touching and in Bob’s case, really funny. The animal planet joke made me laugh my way out of my chair, seriously. Still, I have to question the way these pieces work. The stated goal of the show on their website is to “dispel the myth that [Sex Workers] are anything short of artists, innovators and geniuses!” So, I see these personal narrative pieces as fulfilling that “humanizing” role, informing the audience about the lives and difficulties and pleasures of sex workers to show that they are awesome. I think that it works for most of the audience, and definitely the performance seems aimed at a “general audience” or a “popular” audience, working to demystify sex work and undo centuries of demonization of sex workers that still goes on every day. Still, I feel a little hesitant about the logic of the personal narrative. I feel like it in a way validates the assumptions that sex workers are less than human, or less than geniuses, and tries to overcome that by showing their more personal side. Of course, these performers are doing what they want, and I fully support them in that. Yet, I think its important to ask what assumptions they are making that are going into creating these pieces and what the effect is. Do most people leave thinking “wow, sex workers aren’t so bad after all”, or “wow, sex workers are brilliant, brave, beautiful people”, or “wow, some sex workers are really awesome, but the sex workers on my block are nothing like them”. How can the show do more to really unearth, excavate, expose, bring to light ideas people have about sex workers and challenge them? Hell if I know. But I know that in the variety of pieces I saw, I experienced Dirty Martini’s flicking me off in a very different way from Bob’s personal narrative. I don’t want to oversimplify either, because Bob’s story was hugely entertaining and Lorelei’s first person accounts of the difficulty of working in porn went beyond simple personal experience and showed the strength required to do the actual sex work. Every performance was amazing. I’m simply opening a dialog about the logic of art dealing with sex work, from Burlesque to porn projects like Sharing is Sexy, and how the audience perceives it, what the audience is and how we can achieve what we want with these projects. I just want to know, and am concerned, is the logic making these pieces work “oh poor them” or is it “wow, these people are like Olympic Athletes”, as Violet Blue characterizes them in her recent, awesome “how to have sex like a porn star” article. Or is it “wow, these people are brilliant artists”, or some combination of the above? What did you think of the show? Add a comment below. I was very happy to see Krylon Superstar, a genderbending political performance that was radiant and ass-kicking all at the same time. Keva Lee explores the role of racial stereotypes in sex work, a complex topic that she spoke about from experience. Chris Kraus’s piece Panda Porn, about the San Diego zoo, was a great piece given the context of repression of sex positive space in San Diego. I can’t leave out Erin Markey’s musical number, which was hilarious, amazing and so well performed, (aside from how beautiful she and all the performers are too!). Her characterization of the “give me your money” kind of strip show was unforgettable, and her performance made me laugh the most and the hardest. If you enjoyed the performance, or if you love the rubber rose, or if you just want more amazing sexy spaces and performances in San Diego, call City Council and let them know what you think of their ridiculous effors to shut down the Rubber Rose as a performance venue. This is a real battle in our city that’s being fought only by the two women that run that space, so help them out! Let’s take our inspiration and that fire in our loins from this show and all the amazing events at the Rubber Rose and do what we can to change the political climate in this city with regards to sex. At this point, we’re obviously a sex-positive community, I’ve seen so many of you out at the Rubber Rose events over and over again. How can we work together to try to change things? At the small-ish level of city government, it seems to me that things should be much easier to accomplish… Whadya say? -- blog: http://technotrannyslut.com gpg: 0x5B77079C // encrypted email preferred gaim/skype: djlotu5 // off the record messaging preferred _______________________________________________ Netporn Mailing List Netporn-l@listcultures.org list: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/netporn-l_listcultures.org links: http://del.icio.us/netporn
