Sex and Visibility in the Digital Sphere
Evening event at /rosa, Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 35, 10178 Berlin
/rosa
About the event
/rosa is pleased to present “Sex and Visibility in the Digital Sphere,” an evening with our two current artists-in-residence, Sarrita Hunn and Lotte Louise de Jong, to discuss the entanglements of art, sex work, and activism in the digital sphere from varying perspectives.
Sarrita Hunn will be joined by Flo Heiden to discuss their founding of Cypher Sex, an activist collective focused on digital security for sex-positive and queer communities in Berlin and beyond. They will discuss the challenges of sex-positive activities online in the current prescriptive context. In 2018, FOSTA/SESTA was a bill in the United States that passed under the guise of fighting sex trafficking while actually making an exception to Section 230 of the net neutrality code (that generally provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party content) and silenced online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. In pre-emptive fear of US lawsuits, internet providers used globally (Instagram, Paypal, Mailchimp, craigslist.org, etc.) have updated their Terms of Use policies to prohibit any “adult content” including not only pornography and erotica but also sex toys and sex-positive education. This presentation will also include publications and prints by illustration and design collaborators Bella Merda. @bellamerda.design
Lotte Louise de Jong will be joined by Antonia Hernández to present four related art-projects that investigate the politics and poetics of visibility on sex webcam platforms. Understanding visibility as a form of governance, these projects question the purpose of making things (hyper)visible at the expense of others, while exploring the many ways in which visibility manifests on the platform. In particular, these four projects address the poetics of space on the sexcam platform, the visibilization of maintenance activities, the hidden status of money, and the performers’ agency in regards to their visibility. The presentation will end with a screening of Currently Off Sight, a desktop-based short video and website that foregrounds webcammers’ voices and emphasizes the role of the viewer within the platform visibility.
Artists
Sarrita Hunn is an interdisciplinary artist, editor, curator, and web developer whose often collaborative practice focuses on the culturally, socially, and politically transformative potential of artist-centered activity. She is the co-founder and Editor (with James McAnally) of MARCH: a journal of art & strategy; Assistant Director of Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art; and in 2021 she co-curated (with Warren Neidich and Susanne Prinz) Activist Neuroaesthetics, a festival of events celebrating the 25-year anniversary of artbrain.org. march.international
Flo Heiden Flo has been an activist for all their adult life. Struck by the possibilities of experimenting with identities in the internet and fascinated by cyber cultures and by the liberating potentialities of free software and networks, they have volunteered for independent media, free culture, and hacktivism projects for almost 2 decades and participates in several projects managing privacy-oriented network infrastructures, with a focus on queerfeminist hacking. inventati.org/cyphersex
Lotte Louise de Jong is a media artist from the Netherlands with a background in filmmaking. Her work is research-based and ranges from physical, digital and online installations to more traditional forms of narrative. Her practice addresses how we, as a society, view and shape our identity through mediated spaces like the digital world. The internet as a space for exploring intimacy has been the main focus of her past projects. She obtained a master’s degree in Fine Art and Design at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2019. In 2020 she received an emerging artist grant from the Mondriaan Fonds. lottelouise.nl
Antonia Hernández is a writer, designer, and media artist whose work explores infrastructural relations of intimacy, combining theoretical investigation with arts-based practices to understand the fleshy, living, and domestic aspects of media. She has presented her work and research-creation methodologies widely at conferences, exhibitions, and in artist talks, and is preparing a book on the role of fictional currencies in sexcam platforms. antoniahernandez.com
