By Anne-Sophie Adelys
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by Anne-Sophie Adelys © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz 3 © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz My name is Anne-Sophie Adelys. I’m French and have been living in New Zealand since 2001. I’m an artist. A painter. Each week I check “The Big idea” website for any open call for artists. On Saturday the 29th of June 2013, I answered an artist call titled: “Artist for a fringe campaign on Porn” posted by the organisation: The Porn Project. This diary documents the process of my work around this project. I’m not a writer and English is not even my first language. Far from a paper, this diary only serves one purpose: documenting my process while working on ‘The Porn Project’. Note: I have asked my friend Becky to proof-read the diary to make sure my ‘FrenchGlish’ is not too distracting for English readers. But her response was “your FrenchGlish is damn cute”. So I assume she has left it as is… © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz 4 4 © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz The artist call as per The Big Idea post (http://www.thebigidea.co.nz) Artists for a fringe campaign on porn 28 June 2013 Organisation/person name: The Porn Project Work type: Casual Work classification: OTHER Job description: The Porn Project A Fringe Art Campaign Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand August, 2013 In 2012, Pornography in the Public Eye was launched by people at the University of Auckland to explore issues in relation to pornography through research, art and community-based action. This includes A Different View – an exhibition featuring 20 New Zealand artists that will be on display at the Gus Fisher gallery for ten weeks from August 23rd, 2013. The Porn Project is a fringe art campaign also affiliated with, but autonomous from,Pornography in the Public Eye. We want to get people talking about porn, and we want to do this in ways that are creative, grassroots and participatory. And: we’re walking a line that is collectively neither ‘pro’ nor ‘anti’ porn. In- stead we’re celebrating 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. So: we’re calling for artists and others to create pieces and actions in response to porn that illuminate, question and complicate any ‘common sense’ ideas around sexuality, draw attention to gender and race dynamics and/or offer openings for a more radical porn culture. We’re into having a wide range of forms – paint, photography, video, performance, installation, graphic, film screening, poetry, aca- demic, anything. We’re also seeking public space in the CBD to do all this during August. We don’t have much of a budget, but will do whatever we can to offer a koha for this space and to support artists’ costs if needed. If you would like to contribute your art, space, ideas, questions, perversions or dreams to The Porn Project contact Rachel at [email protected]. In doing so you will be joining with a diverse collective of artists/activists/academics who like sex (a lot) and don’t like misogyny and racism (a lot). © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz 6 © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz I haven’t participated in a group art project this year yet and I always try to do one or two collective art projects/exhibitions each year. I find it useful in my art practice as it allows me to expand my artistic horizon on topics, execution and collaboration that I would not approach on my own. I thought this could be interesting. I emailed the organiser to find out a bit more about the project. I consider myself a liberal, open minded, progressive and non-judgmental woman when it comes to sexual practices and orientations. “Whatever makes you trip is your business and I won’t judge. Enjoy!” I’m an atheist and I don’t have religious views on pornography, or any political or social opinion on the matter either. I like sex just like anybody else. I’m not afraid to talk about it, although I’d rather use the proper words: penis, testicles and vagina rather than pussy, cock and balls. I’m a heterosexual married woman and I have probably not experienced much more than ‘regular’ sex. I’m not closed to the idea of porn. I have watched some porn (what would be considered ‘main stream porn’) and I was not really disgusted by it… It worked on me! It serves a purpose I guess. So working on The Porn Project was fairly attractive and could be a bit of fun. 29/06/2013 - 10.46pm Having a look on internet. What really is porn online now days? 29/06/2013 – 11.25pm Right…. That was a bit more graphic than I expected! I realise I’m probably not as educated and far more naïve than I thought. I also don’t understand most of the vocabulary. I’m quite surprised to see the gender, orientation and race separation. It seems that the categories are not just based on what makes the viewer tick. © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz 8 29/06/2013 – 11.35pm Texting my best friend Becky. Passed the shock of the announcement, the basic questions and answers and making sure I would not ask her to pose for me for this project (as she has before), and after a few jokes and giggles we start exchanging on all the opportunities and different approaches. I start playing with the idea and realised that I would be more interested to have an educated approach rather than one that shocks, considering that I certainly require education on this topic, and I’m most likely not alone in this situation. Also, I was very intrigued by the porn language. Maybe I could work on words, vocabulary? I would be keen to dedramatise the pornographic vocabulary, after all it’s just words. And some of those words seem quite funny. I also find it interesting to be a woman and to work on this. From what I read online, quite a few feminist movements criticize porn as a way to objectify women and their sexuality. I feel like in less than one hour I have opened a can of worms I actually never really knew existed. Where do I stand on this matter? 30/06/2013 – 00.20am Still texting Becky. Becky: Just be careful out there! You can’t un-see some shit. Me: What could happen! People fucking madly! I think I can handle that! Becky: From snippets of conversation I’ve heard over the years...apparently fucking madly is the G rated version Me: Feel totes like a virgin now! I think I know what I will find: woman on woman. Man on woman. Men on woman. Man on man. Men on man. Groups. Sex toys. Can’t really be that horrid! It’s just sex! And I’m not that prude! Becky: Famous last words. What about animals, children and appliances? Me: Right! Didn’t think about that! Becky: Just want you to be careful. It’ll probs be fine, but googling things like porn could lead to far from sanity Visuals, imagery and pictures are probably an issue I need to address NOW in term of research (I need to stay sane) and in terms of art work execution. Do I really want to involve imagery in that work? I’m a painter, but after all, porn online is graphic enough. And I need to bring my own vision on this, rather than reproducing porn images which anyone can google. I’m still very intrigued by the language. 30/06/2013 – 1.54am I have just been extending my English vocabulary in so many ways. I gave up on the actual porn websites and started researching slang and pornographic online dictionaries, which was all very enlightening. 9 © Anne-Sophie Adelys - 2013 - www.adelys.co.nz Now reading about John Reynolds’s art. He used a linguistic approach in his artwork “Cloud” 30/06/2013 – 2.15am Went to bed at 2am. Got out of bed at 2.15am. Turned on my laptop again just to delete my browser history. Can my internet provider see my internet search history? Do I really care? Actually I don’t. It’s just porn. Back to bed. 30/06/2013 – 10.30am Received an email from Rachel, the organiser of The Porn Project. She gives me more info on the project, the exhibition space, the other artists involved and she is actually interested in my proposal. I’m now reading about how the project started in 2011 and an article on Nicola Gavey who is an Associate Professor of Psychology at The University of Auckland and who is involved in the project. http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/perspectives/opinion/template/ subsite_news_item.jsp?cid=454677 Pornography in the public eye 17 November 2011 Associate Professor Nicola Gavey Pornography occupies an awkward position when it ends up on the public stage. We saw this last June when it was revealed that a high profile MP had used his ministerial credit card for “blue movies”. The public rev- elation of this private habit seemed to show a complex intersection of old and new sensibilities about pornography, a twilight zone between sleaze and hip, disgust and embrace, and the private and public spaces of por- nography “consumption”.