letter
from paris : : matthew
rose
the
web, porn, paris and art
Want
big internet exposure? How about all those Amazon.com type sites, surely they
get huge traffic? No. All of the online purchase sites together account for around
15% of internet dollars. Business to business activity, now that's pretty big
you might think. Well yes, that heavy weight comes in at around 35-40% of internet
dollars. And the 45% left? - well that is the domain of the porn site...
Paris
is historically noted for its cabarets, whores, & sex shops and has cultivated
a commercial side of soft and hard porn. Money, photography and the Internet made
pornography a staple, and gave it a business model. As for art, sex has been embedded
in French art, and world art for centuries. In the contemporary art world, artists
have moved specifically into sex and porn as a thematic region. Sex and art are
certainly well out of the closet in 2001. You are forewarned that the following
article contains links, discusses material and has art images of an adult nature.
This article
is part two and looks at art and porn in the context of still imagery and film,
and reviews the response from officialdom.
dirty
pictures part two
[part 1 is here] [go
to part 3]
Genomics,
the science of gene knitting, has given us theoretically the possibility to create
a mate of our liking. As has cloning. Images can easily be cloned, of course;
exact duplicates are fabricated with a mouse click. Ruwen Ogien, a French philosopher
who has written extensively on the morality of "Le Clonage" believes that pornography
offers up what artists have always coveted: the opportunity to be celebrated,
and somewhat famous. After all, pornography is exhibitionism for the masses. Which
is pretty much what artists have striven for over the last few decades.
Although
from an artistic point of view, there are complications. If an artist wants to
critique violence with images of violence, there is no problem: the critique is
apparent in most ways; yet it one wants to critique rape with images of rape,
there is a contradiction. Images of rape seem to promote rape in the eyes of local
critics, while the horror of war is something that could and should be seen in
its entirety.
It's
worth noting the French have taken Yahoo! To court over the sale of Nazi memorabilia
on its auction site. Sometimes the symbols are more powerful than pictures…or
is it just political sensitivity? Mores do change with time. The French courts
are surprisingly equally irate about 'sex tourism,' something you wouldn't expect.
One of Thailand's
growing industries, 'sex tourism' encourages citizens of wealthy nations to land
in its carefree brothels of Bangkok or Phuket for a week of unbridled sex with
young prostitutes. They return to their own countries 'guilt free,' free to talk
about their indiscretions. Not anymore. Parisian bachelor Amnon Chemoui, 48, former
"model employee" of the French public transport authority, was recently arrested
and tried for having sex with an 11 year old Thai girl - in Thailand. French authorities
took away a videotape of the performance and Chemoui is now serving 7 years in
prison.
But Chemoui
is not an artist and his videotape was not one of the films to make it big at
Cannes' Hot D'or, for the best porn film of the year. baise-moi (Fuck Me)
by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi (an X actress) wasn't in the running
for the Hot D'or. Baise-moi's graphic rape scenes were cited by the extreme right
wing group in France, "Promouvoir," which supports family values. The French state
counsel and the Ministry of Culture soon slapped an X on it, effectively knocking
it out of cinemas - and out of the art world where its auteurs intended it to
go.
There remains
only a single X cinema in Paris: Le Beverley. It's owner, Maurice Laroche, said
in the French daily, Libération, "It's ridiculous to classify Baise-moi X because
it's not a porno film. It's well played, but for a voyeur it's zilch."
Condemned
to video, a massive controversy ensued with its defenders calling it art and the
State calling it "a succession of scenes of grand violence and non-simulated sex….without
denouncing the violence wreaked on women; it constitutes, there for a pornographic
message that incites violence…"
Baise-moi's
official internet site, which offered several trailers, was curtailed as well.
The film has been politicized for its hard core sex and its artistic intentions,
and while it in fact features several porn stars, Baise-moi has become the bastard
French poster child for the freedom of artistic expression.
"Glory,
money, fame...it's all there in pornography," says Ogien. "These are real vedettes,
stars. No one is really interested in being a prostitute - that's sordid. But
being featured in a porno flick - that sounds like an artistic activity. There
are the young people in the French suburbs that dream of becoming famous. Pornography
is a path to this end. Like artists." (This thesis is explored in a cartoon version
on the web: Chevonne & Curley, two animated babes who dream of being porn stars.
http://www.icebox.com/viewer_frameset.asp?show=260&episode=462).
If porn has any
moral dimension, its assortment of guilts, pleasures, embarrassments, illegalities
and, possibly its sense of humor, provide it. There is a sinfulness about viewing
private sexual acts in spite of the fact pornographic imagery has a more casual
relationship with the viewer these days. Links to porn sites for "barely legal
teens" are casually tossed out the most harmless sounding of chat rooms (try the
Britney Spears chat room on AOL).
And
who are these "barely legal teens?" Well, we don't know, but they could be the
next star fueling a large global business. You could almost hear the girls say
as animated GIFs show rapid humping: "I'm an artist!" Like Damien Hirst? Making
that kind of money? A bemused Gretchen (her real name?) is but one sample of the
bait employed to grow the business: (http://www.sonixxx.com/homepage/Gretchen.html).
Adultcheck, etc., keeps the men from the boys, or those with credit cards from
those without and secures the business assets.
If
self-referential strategies characterize contemporary art making, the internet
has afforded any and all to become broadcasters of their most banal sexual activities.
EarthTV, for example, lists several hundred cams on its site, with as many as
20,000 viewers waiting for some woman in Aix en Provence or Moscow to come out
of the shower. Even if Warhol's15 minutes has been trimmed to about two minutes,
the cult of celebrity is healthy, and the consumption - of images - is in overdrive.
Pornography has become the fast food of the Internet. It's a bit like McDonald's.
Everywhere it tastes about the same.
Part
three, in the concluding article of this series, looks at exhibitions at the
Pompidou Center in France and the Walker Art Center in the US, and considers the
extent to which sex in art is cultural sexual satisfaction.
Matthew
Rose is a Paris-based artist and writer. He is currently writing an online novel,
Small Time Losers. His e-mail is: mistahrose@yahoo.com.
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