ongoing project
This ongoing artistic research project is dedicated to modes of sexuality in cyberspace. Starting point was a research on performative qualities of online video sex chat platforms and their subversive potentials.
The focus here is on sexual practices and physicality that take place in virtual spaces. Through chatrooms, social media, dating apps, gamification, and virtual reality applications, bodily experiences are increasingly shifting into the digital realm.
I’m interested in how this transformation affects our experiences of intimacy and embodiment, and what queering potentials — but also what possible threats — are unleashed in the process. This leads to the central question: What role do machines play in our sexuality?
This question brings with it a whole cascade of further questions, such as:
To what extent can intimacy be separated from the organic body?
What happens to society when desire is increasingly centered on one’s own body rather than that of the other?
What happens, when desire becomes trapped in the virtual? When scrolling through feeds full of thirst traps constantly promises new forms of desire, only to push satisfaction further out of reach?
What options remain to undermine capitalist principles that infiltrate every aspect of life — especially those driven by pleasure and desire?
And, not to be overlooked: Which bodies are represented in virtual space at all — and what effects does this (non-)representation have on our organic realities?
Since beginning my analytical engagement with Chaturbate.com, I’ve been exploring ways to work performatively with the platform — or at least with its underlying principles. I’m experimenting with various approaches here. For instance, I work with Bluetooth-enabled sex toys, which are also used in the online sex performances. They can be controlled by users in the chat through monetary tips.
I’m investigating the potential of “sextoy hacking” — modifying and programming my own devices — in alignment with the principles of counterculture, open commons, and hacker/maker culture. The goal is to critically examine the intersections of sexuality with capitalist mechanisms of objectification and monetization.
The goal is to explore ways to establish toy hacking as an artistic practice, and to develop corresponding performative strategies.
Part of the project is also an engagement with the platform OnlyFans.com, which enables performers to share sexual content and — supposedly — earn money in a self-determined way. I’m exploring how I to make use of this platform artistically as well, and — just as the community around OnlyFans promises — make a fortune and lift myself out of the precarious reality of being a working artist.
Like sex performers, I too explore the monetization potential of my body.