Ars Erotica Or Scientia Sexualis?

If porn is juicy then the archive is dry as dust. But if pornography and the archive came into being together as functions of modernity— then the archive may verily be as stimulating as pornography is academic. Many poststructuralists follow the conviction that “a true history is a history of desire”, and indeed, what other medium could be more demonstrative of a culture in time and space than that of art and porn?

As a field of inquiry and means of historical-cultural analysis, the study of pornography brings about the intractable tension between porn as a technology of knowledge (as part of the will to know) and porn as a technology of pleasure. This tension serves as a point of departure into the fascinating relationship between porn and the archive (as both a physical space of holding and a conceptual system of grasping) as they conspire toward the creation of norms and the "deployment of sexualities".

Touching upon various strategies of the counter-archive as a foil to the production of dominant narratives, this talk will address both pornography's artistic and political dimensions with the aim of stimulating dialogue toward a more creative and critical approach to the consumption, collection, and creation of pornographies.

Event is here