Amsterdam and the Pinched festival were ridiculously fun and amazing. i have some more thoughtful posts in the works about the people and the ideas I spent time with during my time in Amsterdam, but for now, let’s kick things off with some photos - and one video. I have more video on the way: I have footage for two more episodes of Naked City TV, plus video of the Drag King Fem Show performing, which I’m working on editing. Those of you who are my Flickr contacts have seen these pics already, but here are my faves.
In the Rembrandtplein, there is a statue rendition of Rembrandt’s Night Watch. We did what many tourists likely do - get up in there. This is me with traveling partner extraordinaire, Eliyanna, with whom I used to share the title of Executive Editor at $pread.
Our first night in town, we stayed at Xaviera Hollander’s bed and breakfast. In the morning, breakfast and ridiculousness ensued - Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens were staying with Xaviera as well. Clockwise left to right: Annie Sprinkle, Xaviera Hollander, Xaviera’s husband Philip, me, Elizabeth Stephens.
My interview with Xaviera Hollander, a look back at being the Happy Hooker and how the meaning of that has changed.
Me presenting my talk at Paradiso for the Pinched festival on Saturday. The response to the talk was really awesome.
Eliyanna and me in the canal-side garden behind Paradiso. This is our “proof we went to Amsterdam together” photo.
Beth and Annie on stage at Paradiso, talking about their collaboration.
Me at the Escher Museum in Den Haag. This is my new favorite self portrait.
Bikes outside Den Haag Centraal. I never ceased to be amazed by the quantity of bikes in Holland. The green seat covers are the equivalent of flyers stuffed under your car’s windshield wiper.
Jennifer Lyon Bell and Eliyanna on our last night in town. I met Jen last year when I was in Amsterdam, and we’ve since hung out in four cities and three countries. She’s really amazing - and is the subject of an upcoming episode of Naked City TV.
**EDIT** I just had to add this video of a performance from Saturday night. It’s The Drag King Fem Show performing their gender fucking zombie burlesque number. If you listen closely you can hear me laugh when Britney Spears’ “Toxic” kicks in.
In twelve hours, I’ll be on a plane to Amsterdam and a total sex nerd extravaganza! I have a big pile of work to do before I go (eep), but I’m SO looking forward to getting out of New York for a while.
I’m going to Amsterdam for the Pinched festival, where I’m giving a talk called “Making Sex Media for a Radical Future” on Saturday. I’m pretty stoked about that, but mostly I’m stoked about hanging out with weird and crazy sex nerds. Upon arrival tomorrow after my red eye tonight, my traveling partner (Eliyanna from $pread, yay!) and I are headed to Xaviera Hollander’s, where we’re staying for a night with the lady herself, plus Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens. Yep, it’s a sleep over with the grand dames of the sex industry. Xaviera just had her 65th birthday party, and from what I hear she’s plenty full of piss and vinegar - bring it on. And you bet I’ll be documenting the experience.
I’m also looking forward to see people like Jennifer Lyon Bell and Jurgen Bruning of the Berlin Porn Film Festival, plus plenty of other fascinating people who I haven’t met yet.
I’ll be putting pictures up on my Flickr and I’ll be making video too, plus I’ll put up a daily diary at Naked City - but though I’ll be in Amsterdam starting tomorrow, the daily fun won’t be up on Naked City til next week - that way I can kick back and enjoy the fun without having to record it minute by minute.
A few weeks ago, I was in the company of a fetish model who kept vociferously stating that she does not do nudity. She wasn’t responding to anyone asking her to spread her legs, she was just stating it for the record in a way that made it clear that she has a lot of contempt for people who get naked for money. I wanted to slap her. It was clear that not only did she think she was participating in a higher form of art by not revealing her mons pubis, but that she herself was an artist for not getting naked and appealing to baser instincts. Whatever.
Now - to be clear, there are LOTS of things in the sex industry that I presently would not do. Actually, most things under the rubric of being a sex worker. Pretty much anything that involves taking my clothes off and/or being sexual with strangers in any way (except if I’m behind the camera). However, I don’t judge people in the industry for doing what they’re doing if there’s informed consent involved. However, I have been known to mouth off at people who I know if I think they’re doing something stupid - not all work in the sex industry is good work, and even sometimes even when it’s fully consensual, it’s a terrible idea for the worker involved.
Certainly, I’m not saying all workers should consider doing anything and everything to make a buck. Personal boundaries are super important. But that attitude of “my work is better than yours, therefore I’m a more worthy and less degraded person” makes me absolutely bat shit crazy. A few years ago I saw one of these moments happen between $pread staffers, so it’s definitely something that infects the sex worker rights community. And though I’d like to say that folks working as activists are aware enough of class and industry prejudices and privileges (or the perception of the latter) that this wouldn’t be an issue, sadly it still is a problem.
Whether you work in the sex industry or not, saying that you would never ever do a particular sex act (or act of sexual commerce) while wrinkling your nose to show your disapproval is just plain old not awesome. Feeling that way is fine (I do, about plenty of things), but expressing it in a way that makes other people feel like you think they are despicable - not so good. Personal boundaries with sexuality are highly personal, and there’s no denying that the squick factor exists, but its important to respect people’s choices and predilections.
This is a re-post of a ranty, frustrated post I put up on my Tumblr yesterday afternoon. I feel about 15% less insane than I did yesterday, but I still need fixing. Though I initially posted on Tumblr and tweeted my frustration so this wasn’t all front and center on my “official,” “professional” website - fuck that. This is what my life has been like lately. This is the struggle I’m having, the failures I’m feeling.
Inevitably, it seems that these days someone is always annoyed with me and my inability to do things faster. And I’m annoyed with myself, but also my life at large.
I have a new short film that I want to campaign around, but I haven’t had time to seriously look at festival submissions, much less edit a trailer for it. It’s done though, all 25 minutes of hilariousness.
I have two porn films that I have the green light for, but haven’t moved forward on. I have a script to write, casting to do, locations to solidify.
I have a literary agent but haven’t written any pages of my book-to-be.
Teaching at Rutgers is taking up 20+ hours of my week, and I’m sinking under the pressure. I don’t think I’m doing it justice, I’m not sure how to fix it. I need recommendations for videos/multimedia stuff I can screen/use. I’m drawing a blank on what’s out there.
I can’t get to my email in a timely way. Some correspondence moves to the top of the pile, the rest takes a week or more to respond to. I’m sorry, but I can’t feel bad about it anymore. Sometimes email helps move my “real” work along, other times I get tangled in it and never get to my other work.
I’m making enough money to live, but not enough to feel stable. Not enough to hire people to help me, which I would love to do.
I don’t know how to fix this. I should get interns or something but my experience with that this past spring wasn’t great, and proved that I’m terrible at delegating my duties, and terrible at following up (had potential interns, couldn’t figure out job for them; had one actual intern, had trouble delegating to her). I need to stop being such a control freak because this isn’t sustainable.
I need to take up projects that will yield something more concrete (like cash) instead of prestige and good press clips. I’m a driven, obsessive loner. I don’t have a team. I need to make one. I need to learn to play with others. Otherwise, what’s crankiness about my availability is going to turn into a bad reputation for taking on too much and not getting shit accomplished. I don’t want to be that person. I am not that person yet. I don’t feel like I’m drowning (yet), but I need to fix this. I’m not sure how to do it though. Partly because everything I’m working on feels like a priority, I don’t know what I’d drop or who I’d delegate to.
I know it’s been radio silence over here on Waking Vixen, but I’ve been keeping busy working on Naked City, my blog for the Village Voice. This is the blog’s tenth week, which means that I’ve not only written more than 200 blog posts, but that I’ve now shot and edited 10 episodes of Naked City TV. I’ve learned a lot from shooting the show, and it’s taken me on interesting adventures. Here’s a wrap-up of all the episodes of Naked City TV so far. This week’s episode, an interview with renowed fetish photographer and obsessive collector Eric Kroll, is in the video player at the top, for everything else you’ll have to click through to Naked City to watch, I didn’t want to clutter this page with ten video players.
Babeland Brooklyn Before Opening Day - June 2, 2008. Naked City TV got a personal tour of Babeland’s new Brooklyn site just days before opening, with co-founder Claire Cavanah, who helps us to imagine how the construction site will become home to a new sex positive mecca in Park Slope.
Michele Capozzi: Tour Guide to NYC’s Underground - May 26, 2008. In this episode of Naked City TV, Michele Capozzi ruminates on the ways sex in New York has changed since he moved here in 1978. We also get a peek at a piece of Manhattan not many people know about, the boat basin off the Upper West Side - which is where Michele calls home.
GrappleDen: Underground Erotic Wrestling Club - May 19, 2008. Naked City paid a visit to the GrappleDen party in Hell’s Kitchen, where a mix of competitive, exhibition, fetish, and just plain fun wrestling matches take place one Wednesday night every month. They may have silly (and skin-baring) costume themes, but their training and enthusiasm for grappling is real.
Inside Fred Harper’s Painting Studio - May 12, 2008. Fred Harper’s pop surrealist paintings burst off the canvas with a blast of color, machinery, and sex. Naked City TV paid a visit to his studio in Williamsburg to get a sneak peek of the work he’ll be presenting at his upcoming show at Last Rites Gallery.
Bondage Bed Design in Williamsburg - May 5, 2008. Furniture designer Sullivan Walsh crafts one of a kind pieces out of his studio in Williamsburg. In this episode, we visit the workshop where all the magic happens.
SoHo Theater Stages a Stripper’s History of the World - April 28, 2008 This episode features clips from the stage production of Heather Woodbury’s one-woman show “The Last Days of Desmond Nani Reese: A Stripper’s History of the World,” as well as an interview with Woodbury.
Sex 2.0 Brings the Internet’s Sex Nerds to Atlanta - April 14, 2008. On April 12th, sex nerds from all over the country gathered at BDSM community space 1763 in the city of Atlanta for Sex 2.0, an unconference that explored the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. In this episode of Naked City TV, several participants from the conference talk about why they went to Sex 2.0.
The Porno Jim Show - April 7, 2008. This episode shines the spotlight on The Porno Jim Show, a live comedy act in which Porno Jim delivers the dirt on how to find good porn, offers up some of his faves, and supplies plenty of laughs with examples of some of the stranger porn available.
Welcome to the fourth edition of the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy! I’ve gathered a bunch of posts that I find interesting and thought-provoking - initially I tried to organize them according to different themes (sex and the law, sex work, porn, etc) but there was just too much cross-over. So you’ll just have to deal with one big long messy list of links and quotes.
The problem sex workers have with some (many?) articles about sex trafficking is not that they don’t acknowledge the sex workers rights movement, although I’m not gonna lie, it’d be nice to get even a fourth of the coverage that sex trafficking does, but rather that sex trafficking laws often have serious detrimental effects on working women of choice, and most articles on trafficking entirely omit this reality. (The situation in Cambodia is one of many examples.)
Such articles are, practically speaking, extremely dangerous to voluntary sex workers. They enforce the idea that all sex workers are victims and rally the public to support laws that are often disingenuously and/or simplistically explained. This is particularly true when the article in question doesn’t bother to mention the omnipresent conflation of all prostitution with trafficking, and in doing so, furthers that conflation.
So calling out such articles, when we do it, which is probably not nearly as often as we should, is not us being bratty or overly sensitive. It is us fighting to keep ourselves and our friends and our family as safe as possible and to keep our movement from losing whatever tenuous ground we’ve secured.
A while back, I ran a health seminar for a group of high school girls. Before we started I handed out a sheet with questions like: What do you want to get out of this program? Are there any issues you think we should talk about? What is one thing you really like about your group of friends and one thing you find challenging about them?
I asked the girls to answer the questions anonymously and then to give them to me when they were done. When I got the papers back, I kept on seeing the same thing. Girl after girl had written that something she didn’t like was how everyone called each other skank, slut and ho.
“Wow,” I said to the group after glancing over the sheets. “It seems like there’s a lot of name calling going on.”
“What are you talking about?” I heard from an obvious Alpha sitting front and center.
“Well,” I told her, “A lot of people seem to be uncomfortable being called things like ’slut’ by other girls.”
What are we to make of the recent Supreme Court ruling on United States v. Williams? Now, just telling someone you have child pornography on your computer is a federal offense — even if you don’t. The New York Times wrote an editorial against the Supreme Court’s decision, explaining how, as much as they’d rather not stand on the perceived side of a child pornographer, “this law is drawn in a way that also criminalizes speech that should be protected by the First Amendment.”
Justice Scalia wrote there’s no “possibility that virtual child pornography or sex between youthful-looking adult actors might be covered by the term ‘simulated sexual intercourse,’” which further muddles this issue. Saying you have fake child porn is illegal, but the images are perfectly ok — no matter how skilled the photoshopping?
Some feminists in the UK have responded favourably to this new law on the grounds that “extreme” pornographic websites promotes violence against women in the name of sexual gratification. Some even argue, “Pornography killed Jane Longhurst”.
The fact that Coutts was known to be fascinated with asphyxiation before he was looking it up on porn sites seems to be lost in this. Coutts had said himself he wanted to kill women from the age of 15. Believing that these thoughts would one day lead to criminal actions, he sought psychiatric treatment - this was twelve years before the murder. Five years before the murder, he discussed his obsession with his GP.
When I circled around to them, greeted her by name and motioned with my arm a bit protectively around her back for us to walk back into the clinic, and we tried to go in, he stepped in front of me, as well. He stepped in front of me, arms waving as if flagging down a driver who has come to help you when your car has broken down — as if clearly, I was help en route for him — and said, “She won’t LISTEN to me!”
It wasn’t just what he said, but the way he said it; the way he said it with this confidently held belief that I was on his side, that her disobedience was preposterous, and that, of course, her compliance to him would have been my primary or sole concern. I had to fight off the very nonproductive urge to say something to the effect of, “Oh dear! She won’t listen to you? That’s not right at all. Why don’t us uppity little ladies just sit down and you can tell us how it is since we’ve clearly lost our marbles all thinking for ourselves. I just don’t know what’s gotten into us. I am so sorry. Daddy knows best!”
Instead, still trying to get us both past him and back into the clinic, I said, very firmly, “I don’t care. I am taking her inside where she is safe, and you need to leave.”
Lie: “This will destroy traditional marriage.”
Fact: You know it hasn’t done so in Massachusetts, or in Spain, an even more traditional society. Traditional marriage has been destroying itself quite energetically in America for years, BEFORE gays could marry.
Lie: “Marriage is intended to facilitate procreation.”
Fact: You know that if this were true, marriage would be denied to couples who were infertile, post-menopausal, or committed to being childless. The state doesn’t do fertility tests before issuing marriage licenses.
Lie: “Children are better off with a heterosexual couple.”
Fact: You know there are no reliable studies showing that kids do better with straight parents. You know there are LOTS of studies showing that kids do as well with gay parents as with straight parents with similar incomes and education. And you know that half of all heterosexual married couples get divorced. Do you argue that having divorced heterosexual parents is good for kids?
Today I did court advocacy for a woman named Goddess Diana, a tantric massage provider that was arrested and as of this afternoon, evicted from her condo on Chicago’s north side. Diana is a wild-child, free spirit type who has been practicing tantra for several years and was providing sessions out of her condo building on a major street in a hip, yet highly gentrified neighborhood. Normally tantra providers usually fall under the radar of law enforcement, as their practice is a bit too esoteric for the average joe to understand, but in this particular case, Diana was basically railroaded by her nosy neighbors.
Unfortunately, Diana’s biggest folly may have been purchasing a condo in a three flat sandwiched between two yuppified, similarly surnamed couples, one with a child. And of course, yuppies are always trying to protect their children from something they might perceive to be dangerous, despite how harmless it really is. Diana’s neighbors took offense to her artistic lifestyle and bohemian appearance and began mounting a plot to get her out of the building. They searched online for information about her business, found it was sexual in nature, and mounted a camera in the lobby of their building to watch the comings and goings of Dian, her friends, and her clients. The video from these tapes was then posted on You Tube, complete with Diana’s name calling her a “whore” for all the world to see.
It’s official! The anti-porn feminists (remember “Porn is the theory, rape is the practice”?) have finally realized that their “porn causes rape” theory was wrong. Dead wrong. Not even close. Unfortunately, without skipping a beat they’ve invented a brand new theory for why porn is still evil.
Now, I hate to call attention to this essay by Naomi Wolf (or even read it for that matter), but it’s sadly been popping up around the Internet lately as a feminist theory, and I’ve had some requests for a feminist response to it.
That’s it, I’m leaving. And I’m taking the hot ones with me. Women of the Internet, it’s time to go. It’s dangerous online for us in tech. As long as we were moderating “coping with cutting” LiveJournals and keeping Zappos rich by shoe shopping, the Valley and the men who made it paid us little mind. But if we dare be more than pretty eyeballs driving the market, we must challenge the deep misogyny pulsing at the heart of the hypertext transfer protocol. Consider this a collective Swiftian kick to the panties. Follow me, for this is why we have no hope here…
I had a friend who had gone to school and become a massage therapist ~ yes, the “real & legit” kind. Her dates & boyfriends were constantly expecting, even demanding, free massages. Her response was, “This is my job; will you perform your job for me for free?” But it still didn’t stop the whining and requests…
Now imagine you’re a sex worker in a relationship. Don’t you think you’d be asked for acts when you’re not in the mood ~ and then hear, “Well, you do it for Johns…”
My response was always, “Well, then pay me my rate.” That always shut them up. But still, they asked, expected, whined… And they thought that since I was getting it all day, I didn’t need foreplay. (Too many men think this for various reasons; but I’ll keep this specific to escorting.)
All of this is to say that the issue of sex worker relationships is, like any relationship, complicated. Do we ask massage therapists, cooks, childcare providers ~ any service professional how satisfying their relationships and sex lives are?
I’m curating the Fourth Edition of the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy, started by the lovely Caroline at Uncool. It will go live here on Waking Vixen on June 2nd. I have a list of posts I’m planning on including, but feel free to nominate posts of your own or someone else’s as well: dacia[at]wakingvixen.com. Please have your suggestions to me by midnight EST on Sunday, June 1.
The Third Edition is up at Jaded Hippy at the moment - have a look if you’re curious to see what kind of posts get included. There’s no specific theme, just the best and most interesting posts about feminism and sexuality that have gone up over the last few weeks.
Though I’ve been lying low a bit in terms of doing events and traveling, I’ve got a few interesting things coming up. This coming Tuesday, June 3rd, I’m going to be on a panel called “The Positive Side” – Changing Sex-worker stereotypes through art and expression.” Referencing the “American Stripper” series of photographs currently on exhibit at Peer Gallery, Panelists Charise Isis, Audacia Ray and Dahlia will discuss the ways in which sex workers are viewed by culture, art and media. It’s taking place at Peer Gallery, 526 W.26th St. Suite 209 at 6.30 pm, and it’s free. Even if you’re over hearing me talk about this stuff, Charise’s photos are well worth seeing - I’ve covered her work in $pread as well as on Fleshbot, and it’s really exceptional. To RSVP, email rsvp@peergallery.com. [Photo shown at left is Joie, Gelatin Silver Print, 60″x40″, edition of 3]
Later in June, I’m headed for Amsterdam to present the following talk: Making Sex Media for a Radical Future at Pinched: sex, love, and countercultures at Paradiso in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Saturday, June 21, 2008.
There are only a handful of companies that own the vast majority of media outlets. These media outlets treat real discussions and information about sexuality with kid gloves. At the same time, they aggressively pursue salacious scandal material and reinforce norms and taboos. Companies that focus on sexuality, like porn companies, also tend to reinforce cultural norms - yet there is a growing contingent of individuals, companies, and art collectives who are breaking the boundaries of sex and gender through sex media production and play. In this talk Audacia Ray, who is a producer and curator of sex media herself, will give a tour to some of these projects as they exist online, on DVD, in print, and in art spaces. The talk asks the questions: how can we challenge mainstream media representations of sex and gender? Is the feminist approach to these topics key? Are commercialism, personal expression, and art at odds with one another? What tools and communities are needed to create alternative sexual media cultures?
For those in the Bay Area, an abbreviated version of The Bi Apple will be screening at the Frameline LGBTQ Film Festival as part of a bisexual short film program called Bi Request at 9.30 pm on June 25th.
The other cool thing I’m up to over the next six weeks is that I’m co-teaching a course, Human Sexuality, at Rutgers University in Newark. It’s pretty awesome so far - tonight is my first solo lecture, on Gender and Sexual Orientation.
I finally got my hands on the clip of me on CNN Prime News from March 13th. In case you don’t recall, I got a call to do a segment on CNN Prime News. This was the day after “Eliot Spitzer’s call girl” - quotes because, what, he owns her? - got outed. The interview is all about the harm that has befallen “Kristen” - and yeah, not the harm the media is doing to her, but being a prostitute, even one who has chosen that line of work.
They didn’t edit anything down, they just ran the full interview, which is awesome. I stammer a little bit here and there, but I think I did a good job of staying on message and not getting wrapped up in the leading questions I’m being asked. And also, I’m pretty proud of my serious face. Bring it!
And here is my favorite piece of writing I did during that week of Spitzer insanity: Why sex workers aren’t represented in the media. It’s important to note that I wrote that piece before I appeared on CNN, and the booker had read it before she called me. She prepped me with the same questions the interviewer asked on air - though the interviewer said the same words with a very different tone. Behold:
As you might be able to tell from the radio silence here on Waking Vixen for the past bunch of weeks, I’ve been busy pursuing other stuff. That other stuff is primarily in the form of writing posts and shooting video for Naked City, though there’s other stuff in the works too (teaching my first college course, working on a new book, brainstorming dirty movies, planning a trip to Amsterdam, falling hopelessly behind on answering email, not posting wrap ups of my internet goings on).
Though for years I’ve played around in the weird space of being an Interesting Person Worthy of Media Attention and a media maker, this little dance has gotten increasingly interesting since I’ve become editor of the Village Voice sexuality blog.
I’ve been writing the blog in the first person - none of that editorial we stuff - and I haven’t been afraid to express my opinions. After all, the Voice hired me for me and my whole thing (I’m gesticulating wildly, FYI). However, I’ve also been leaving myself out of the picture more often than not. Though you’ll hear my voice overs in the weekly Naked City TV episodes, I haven’t yet done an on camera appearance. I like being in the spotlight sometimes, and I’m good at doing the media thing. But I don’t want it to be overkill, I want other people’s voices to come to the forefront, in a way that isn’t totally mediated by the Word of Audacia. I know that all media I produced is tainted with my perspective (tainted I say!), which is fine, cool even - but it doesn’t all need to be about me.
While I don’t want Naked City to be all fangirly posts about people I think are awesome, I’m also acutely aware of the stresses of being interviewed and trusting someone else to represent you. I’ve been asking thinky and sometimes tough questions in my Four on the Floor interviews, but I also strive to represent people at their best. Shooting and editing weekly video episodes has been challenging in this regard - sometimes people are bad on camera. Sometimes they say dumb things or things that make them look crazy. I edit that stuff away as an attempt at paying it forward.
I hope this doesn’t make me a less critical member of the media - I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. But there are still some stories I cringe away from. For example, in my first week of blogging at Naked City, I was offered a set of nude photos of a reality show star. These images had been made a few years ago, and would be upsetting to the star if they were leaked. Part of me was excited about the potential for breaking a story, getting lots of traffic, etc. Overwhelmingly, though, I had a sense of dread with pangs of creepiness. That’s not at all the kind of editor I want to be. I didn’t have to make this tough choice since there weren’t any releases for the images and I wasn’t going to tangle with that. I’m sure other stuff like this will come up. I do love me some gossip - but I like to hear it, not publish it. Is it even possible to maintain that party line and have a successful blog? Time will tell, I suppose.
Attending Sex 2.0 gave me lots of things to think about, and I’ve been mulling these things over in my brain a lot since April 12th. The first session I attended was Melissa Gira’s Sex Styles of the Internet Famous, in which there were a number of cute role plays around issues that arise from dating within the web 2.0 culture. Such as: what happens when you Twitter about sex with one partner but not another? What if one person demands a recognition of relationship status on Facebook but the other prefers these things to stay private? What if one person in a group outing doesn’t want their name and face on Flickr?
During the session, Melissa joked that maybe the only way to work around these questions is to date someone who doesn’t give a shit about the internet. That’s pretty much what I’ve done. Sure, my guy uses the internet to send email, check out porn, and lurk on a few messageboards, but he could care less about the world of social media. This resistance to social media is simultaneously cute, relieving, and slightly annoying. If there’s something I want him to have a look at, I still have to do the old fashioned thing where I email him a link. I don’t do that with anyone else, except my family.
We’re preparing to send our first fully collaborative project off to the Paris and Berlin Porn Film Festivals (technically, I should be writing a press release instead of this blog post). It should be interesting to see the ways my sweetie’s relationship with Web 2.0 changes as he becomes more fully and visibly a part of the Audacia Ray media machine story. He’ll probably still think it’s all pretty silly.
And yeah, this is a cock-teasing way to let you all know that I’ve been working on a short film. It’s not porn, but it is adult in nature. More info and a trailer to come.
In twelve hours, I’ll be on a plane to Amsterdam and a total sex nerd extravaganza! I have a big pile of work to do before I go (eep), but I’m SO looking forward to getting out of New York for a while.
Though I’ve been lying low a bit in terms of doing events and traveling, I’ve got a few interesting things coming up. This coming Tuesday, June 3rd, I’m going to be on a panel called “The Positive Side” – Changing Sex-worker stereotypes through art and expression.” Referencing the “American Stripper” series of photographs currently on exhibit at Peer Gallery, Panelists Charise Isis, Audacia Ray and Dahlia will discuss the ways in which sex workers are viewed by culture, art and media. It’s taking place at Peer Gallery, 526 W.26th St. Suite 209 at 6.30 pm, and it’s free. Even if you’re over hearing me talk about this stuff, Charise’s photos are well worth seeing - I’ve covered her work in $pread as well as on Fleshbot, and it’s really exceptional. To RSVP, email rsvp@peergallery.com. [Photo shown at left is Joie, Gelatin Silver Print, 60″x40″, edition of 3]
