Alongside the many films, workshops and performances at the 13th Pornfilmfestival Berlin, an art exhibition will once again take place in the Moviemento in 2018.
As a result of an open call, twelve artistic positions from diverse countries were chosen and invited to exhibit. The artists present their works (including photography, sculptures, videos and painting) in the various rooms of the cinema, dealing with themes of sexuality, feminism, eroticism, gender identity and politics in sensual, bold, critical and playful ways.
Curated by Sandy Becker
die Blaue Distanz (by Anna Erdmann & Franziska Goralski)
Wearing Strap Wear
die Blaue Distanz invented the term “Strap Wear” for a special kind of erotic clothing. “Strap Wear” manifests between the poles of being (half-)naked and being covered. Wearing “Strap Wear” is an empowering way to play with gender roles and to show hidden identity facets.
The collective owns a “Strap Wear” collection composed of bought pieces and self designed hand-made ones. Materials often used are (fake) leather, rubber band, metal pins, lugs and rings and mesh fabrics.
Patrice Honore and Francois Ghys
Fuck War
The statue FUCK WAR is made of bronze from Kalashnikov AK47 ammunition. Designed by AKT.
AKT is a team of engineers, designers, and craftsmen creating art with destroyed weapons and ammunition collected by the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action. This piece, inspired by a quote from Iggy Pop, is actually a visual joke; it is a way to turn war into a laughing stock.
Matt Romein
Meat Puppet Arcade
MEAT PUPPET ARCADE is a collection of computer programs that place 3D scans of the artist’s nude body into Sisyphean environments that poke, bludgeon, and stimulate the body in evocative, humorous and unsettling ways. The project examines how digital technology allows the physical body to be subjected to impossible forms of imagined stimulation and pain.
By divorcing the relationship between violent and euphoric action and its resulting physical sensations, the project explores the possibilities of the digital body acting as a surrogate for impossible kinks and questions whether the absence of consequence and physical pain negates the effectiveness of this approach.
HAИ
PLAY
While investigating the taboo topics of masturbation and sexual desire, a stigmatizing perception of sex toys as sleazy and disreputable can still be widely observed today. This is due in part to the outdated and crude advertisement of such products in sex shops.
PLAY provokes the notion that sex toys can help us better understand intimacy with ourselves and others. HAИ displays toys using a peephole aesthetic to allow the viewer to experience a feeling of voyeurism and in doing so replicates the atmosphere of entering a private shop to purchase these products.
Erik Gebbert
Team Boys Series
The TEAM BOY SERIES is a serie of woodcut prints in various formats. The serie consists of approximately 120 prints and several printing plates made of basswood and beechwood. The motives of the prints are based on found footage: homoerotic pin-ups and frames of porn films, taken directly from the semi-public space of the internet.
The approach is a playful, graphic examination of the body image within homoerotics. As a result of the printing technique (elimination technique), the images are composed of several layers of color. Meanwhile the mirror image on the printing plate vanishes as more layers are added to the print itself.
Cristina Zickert
Crispy, Soft & Tender
The boundaries of porn are about to dissolve – they will cease to exist. Therefore pornography is increasingly migrating from the margins of society to its very core. Instagram phenomena such as Foodporn, Travelporn, etc. reflect this shift.
Not showing any of the human body, the imagery creates the iconography of a new pornography. The work CRISPY, SOFT & TENDER explores the unique iconography and language of Foodporn. Intending to be pornographic, it challenges the limits of contemporary pornography.
Mischa Badasyan und Abdulsalam Ajaj
Skin Hunger
SKIN HUNGER is a project from the performance series „TOUCH“, and deals with the psychological term “Skin Hunger” that describes the need for closeness and physicality.
Suspension and piercings function as a metaphor for closeness to one’s own body and communication with oneself.
Carla Schleiffer
Documenting filmmakers and actors from the queer pornscene in Berlin, Carla Schleiffer gives a close insight in the external and internal world of the artists and their projects.
Using only analog photography, the images have a strong, unique, and sometimes cineastique character.
Virginia De
Sin
The Christian vision of life resupposes the existence of a “sin”. Sin is the transgression to a personal commitment, to an infinite demand of a power immensurable.
Controlling the drives and sexuality became a fundamental element in the Holy Inquisition in Spain. These pictures try to get that vision closer using exact replicas of the devices they used to punish the sexuality of women during this period.
Ashley Lake
For the last five years, Ashley has collaborated with escort and adult entertainer Liara Roux in creating imagery for advertising Liara’s in-person sex work. Together, they’ve created a brand that relies on a sense of longing and even nostalgia, using natural light and film photography to bring an organic feel to the imagery. While commonly found on advertising sites such as Eros, now a small selection of these images are available for exhibition and collection as objects of art in and of themselves.
Friederike Jäger
Orchestra Of Love
Collage belongs to Jägers sound as well as to her painting works, dealing with trial and error-combinations that can be seen or be heard.
At the Pornfilmfestival, animal-sounds “yawning” or pornsounds “moaning”, combine animal and human sounds to an abstract multimedia-collage, together with small-format sketches and paintings containing “ideas of spiritual and physical love” in the toilet-cabins of Moviemento.
Ruschka Steininger & Benjamin Krieg
In her blood
It is a banal situation: a woman is menstruating. But this time every single drop of her blood remains in the room. Two cameras are facing her bed.
IN HER BLOOD deals with the control over and taboo of menstrual blood, either fully invisible in public (never a spot of red between the legs) or totally negated through light blue liquid on perfumed sanitary pads, designed like snow white blossoms, like misogynous fantasies of hygiene and purity which reject women* and their actual bodies.
