The Porn Project - A Fringe Art Campaign

The Porn Project

A Fringe Art Campaign, 8th – 18th August

PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

5th August, 2013. “We like sex and porn. We don’t like misogyny and racism. And we believe that these two positions can co-exist – we just need to create a space for this, and that begins with dialogue”. Rachel Jane Liebert, PhD Candidate and Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York, has returned to Auckland this Winter to co-curate and participate in The Porn Project – a fringe art campaign to get people talking frankly about porn.

These days nearly a third of Internet traffic is for porn sites, which receive 450 million unique visitors each month. That’s nearly 50 percent more than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. Despite this unprecedented access, porn remains a taboo subject in the public eye. In part due to the historic ‘sex wars’ between feminists that cast people into either ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ categories, and in part due to cultural attitudes about sex. Both of which make it hard for people to share their nuanced desires for, and concerns about, porn.
“Forcing people to take either flat-out pro or flat-out anti positions on porn has undermined our ability to critically engage with our contemporary porn culture”, says Rachel. “Some porn is awes. Some is shit. Some is both. Some is neither. And how we think about all this needs to be able to include what individually gets us off and consideration of porn’s social and political effects”.

From the 8th to the 18th of August, The Porn Project is using art to walk a line that is collectively neither pro nor anti porn, but that instead celebrates diverse desires, bodies, sex and erotica, while at the same time refusing misogyny and racism – whether the repetition of narrow ideas about ‘normal’ sexuality, or explicit gender- and race-based violence. Committed to values and politics of participation, the campaign is set to be broad and greatly varied with over fifty contributors of paint, poster, video, illustration, dance, guerrilla action, talks, installation, live performance, film and more. All will take place on and around K'Rd – occupying spaces in Method & Manners, Co.Space POPup, Allelujah, Corner Window Gallery, shop fronts and the street.

Auckland born and raised, Rachel has been based in NYC since 2007 doing creative activism around the surveillance of our bodies, psyches and sexualities – from the ‘designer vagina’ industry to the NYPD. For The Porn Project she is especially collaborating with Amelia Hitchcock, Elam graduate and founder of Intentional Space – a collective for creative practitioners wanting to make change in the world. The Porn Project is also affiliated with, but autonomous from, Pornography in the Public Eye – a multi-faceted project launched by academics at the University of Auckland to explore issues relating to porn. This includes A Different View – an exhibition featuring 20 New Zealand artists that will be on display at the Gus Fisher gallery from 23rd August.

The Porn Project opening party starts at 7pm on Friday, 9th August, at Method & Manners, 6 Upper Queen Street, with an initial exhibition as well as performances including She’s So Rad and Double Dipp.

For more information:
the-porn-project.tumblr.com
Facebook ‘The Porn Project’
Instagram ‘#ThePornProject’

ENDS

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