Berlin. It is difficult to say whether it’s a creeping, disorganized process or a structural necessity, but pornography has definitely made its way into the cultural mainstream of Western capitalist society. Beyond, or in connection with, the porno industry, the explicit presentation of sex has lost at least some of its startling effect and acquired in all cultural fields an almost self-evident public visibility. This conclusion seems paradoxical when considering Foucault’s famous thesis that the constant and obsessive discussion of sex is perhaps a modern imperative. What has intensified in recent years is the permeability of cultural milieus, among which pornography can then circulate and oscillate. The presence of hard-core scenes as part of the storyline in narrative films still creates a stir, but they are shown in cinemas and at film festivals nonetheless. At the same time, the narratives in the porno genre have become extremely differentiated. If, as part of this logic, pornography makes sex speak to us as the visual confession of bodily desires, then this also means a reversal of the Foucaultian matrix. The confession as an intrinsic »truth« of the ego is externalized in pornography and is relocated to the bodily surfaces. Perhaps exactly this reversal is also the reason why mediatized sex manages to conquer every other medium.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that the well-attended two-day »Post Porn Politics« conference would be held in the Sternfoyer of the Volksbühne in Berlin. What was surprising instead was that, in a highly concentrated setting, a multifaceted and relaxed discourse based on complex visual policies could develop around the subject matter, without reverting to a purely academic ritual. The expression »Post Porn«, popularized at the end of the 1970s by the sex worker and performance artist Annie Sprinkle, once identified the parallel movement of freeing oneself from the paradigms of classical, male-dominated hetero-porn without generally questioning or relinquishing the public treatment of sex. Early feminist criticism of the sexist power dispositive in pornography, which stages and allows for feminine desire only as masculine exploitation and projection, tended to view and criticize porno films, and classical films as well, from the perspective of reifying the female body as an object of male lust. The PorNo movement is only a more concrete, political offshoot of this vantage point. However, as Linda Williams wrote in her groundbreaking »Hard Core« at the end of the 1980s, »to my surprise, in the genre where I expected to see the most unrelieved and unchallenged dominance of the phallus ... I saw instead a remarkable uncertainty and instability.«¹ Precisely this uncertainty and instability, as inscribed in porno films themselves as well as in their reception, was the focus of all contributions at the conference, oscillating between affirmation and critique.
Even today, Annie Sprinkle embodies in her own easygoing way the promise of a liberating and subversive »happiness« linked with an affirmative treatment of pornography. Her performance – the only one that took place in the completely sold-out main hall – significantly carried the title: »Annie Sprinkle: My life and work as a post porn modernist for 30 years.«
The prefix »post« lends to the notion that »Post Porn« is related to postmodernism. However in fact, the celluloid porno films of the 1970s that flickered on the gigantic silver screens with which they began their journey had a modern patina that made the viewer almost melancholic. At the end there was then the »who-wants-to-look-into-my-vagina« number that was eagerly awaited and taken advantage of by some fans. While at the time the »public cervix announcement« was a means of intensifying the view and taking it to absurd extremes, since continual enlargement ultimately extinguished the spectacle, today, this quasi medicinal »voyeurism« comes dangerously close to being the order of the day in our current spectacle cult. As a nearly historical figure, Annie Sprinkle stands for the decisive fact that, in the early 1970s, women intervened in the pornography discussion. Since then, more and more people have participated in the discussion and enhanced the aforementioned diversity that makes pornography interesting again today. The result is an astonishing democratization – perhaps the most startling development that has taken place in recent times in this genre, and which thanks to the Internet has truly led to an explosion. This aspect was the subject of many presentations. The filmmaker Todd Verow, who conducted his presentation »How to Shoot Sex Scenes and Become a Porn Star« naked, sees entirely new production forms developing in the rampant growth of self-shot online pornography. The joint presentation »Confessions of a Porn (Fashion Victim)« by Jacobs, Pasquinelli and Janssen examined the communicative traps set by netporn. The theorist of queerness Lee Edelman concerned himself with the implications of cybersex and went on to develop theses toward »dehumanization« as a queer project. Michaela Wünsch offered important insights on this subject in her presentation, bringing to mind the »anal crypt-aesthetics« of the author Jean Genet – and pointing out that the downside of this discursive explosion goes hand-in-hand with disciplinary measures, and that the invisibility and »secret language« of the closet constitute an attempt to speak about sex and deny it this access. As with Genet, the French queer activist Maxim Cervulle was interested in the re-coupling of gay pornography with the categories of ethnic background and class. Aside from the presentations, there were also performances, among others by BuBu de la Madeleine from Japan, William Wheeler and the group girlswholikeporno.
The most extreme contrast to Sprinkle’s Post Porn Love was the audiovisual presentation by Terre Thaemlitz. A skeptical nihilist through and through, always eager to steal the thunder from euphoric queer imperatives, he put glamour to the test this time in »Viva McGlam? Is transgenderism a critique of or capitulation to opulence-driven glamour models?« His lucid analysis of the internal entanglement of power and excess that clings to every form of self-empowerment culminated in an incessant series of medical photos of freshly operated genitals, flooding the room with intimate pain and solitude – both in blatant contrast to and accompanying the diverse dramatizations of lustful bodies and body parts that had dominated the screens for two days. Thaemlitz reminded listeners that this new pornographic and queer discourse did not arise simply because altruistic Democrats wanted to involve women, lesbians and gay men, but rather because the capitalist drive to expansion demanded it. In support of pornography not being simply one genre among many, but rather still subject to special consideration, the underground filmmaker Bruce LaBruce presented an interesting case study, calling himself a »reluctant pornographer.« His last film, »The Raspberry Reich«, which was shown in Sundance and at the Berlinale – and was perhaps the most interesting cinematic commentary in recent years on the RAF – was censored not due to its gay sex scenes, but rather because the use of a wallpaper-sized picture of the revolutionary icon Che shocked his heirs.

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

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