di Eleonora Catalli da Londra
Community Action Center
Tate Modern – Monday, 6 June 2011
Let’s go and watch porn! Let’s go and talk about it! Watching lesbian porn in the Auditorium of the Tate Modern on a Monday evening and then discussing it with its directors, A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner is certainly an experience I won’t forget.
It is impossible to summarise a plot that doesn’t really exist. I can only list personal perceptions/interpretations of this 69 minute documentary of sexual scenes: sex beyond the ‘traditional’ act of penetration but as research into intimate desires liberated from social restrictions; rejection of the accepted and dominating imagery of the male phallus; sex and violence as a complementary pair; pleasure and pain as an essential oxymoron; the body as a territory on which to engrave a history of pleasure; indistinctness and ambiguity of female/male bodies.
I felt disturbed, irritated, disgusted; I thought about leaving – as many did – but I was curious and stayed until the end. I do not regret it. The following Q&A session contextualised the video that I would have otherwise misunderstood; it opened an honest space for discussion about sexuality exploring the limits of accepted models and identities. I won’t write about the artistic/pornographic precedents of the video nor about the queer theory, feminism or lesbian and gay-male movements entangled in its production – I have to admit that I don’t know much about them – I’d rather write about how I felt part of a social experiment and the (unanswered) questions that have been raised in my mind.
The video was produced by the community to be returned to it, as the title suggests. The actors are not professionals, but artists, friends and ex-lovers of A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner who are actors themselves. The video is directed with minimal intervention and the individuals are left free to experiment with their own research into pleasure. The refusal to use the internet to make the film available to the public in a conventional way prevents its consumption in the intimacy of individual spaces; instead, the use of a museum gathers people from the community and shares it with them. I therefore felt part of the experiment but realized it only at its end! Needless to say, not knowing the person who was sitting next to me and guessing his/her motivations and feelings was very intriguing. By the way, I arrived when the lights were already off and had to wait until the end to ‘discover the audience’, which to my surprise was very mixed.
I wrote about the social experiment, I have also mentioned (unanswered) questions, I will simply tell you them: What is sexuality? What is art? Who/what sets the limits?
For further reference: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/24006.htm
If you want to discuss this video review with Eleonora and give your opinion about it, send an e-mail to info@culturalismi.com and write “TO ELE ABOUT COMMUNITY ACTION CENTER” in e-mail subject . You can write either in English or in Italian.
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