Pornoxotic, 2015
2 Channel HDDV, 42min and 22min single channel HDDV interview with Leigh Robb
Exhibited at PICA, Western Australia
The video artwork Pornoxotic is a critique of the connection between heterosex and the settler colonial project. I have selected and slowed down clips of the male face during orgasm, taken from Australian pornographic films. On a second screen displays a stitched narrative created by scenes from these pornographic films in which no women are visible. These are superfluous sequences of narrative between men in which they demonstrate the typically “badly” acted male porn star. The juxtaposition of these clips is intended to reveal firstly a pornographic exotic vision of Australia and secondly a performative similarity. It suggests the cum face is a highly performative moment rather than an affective moment. It suggests that the male cum shot, in particular the faked expressions of male ecstasy in these films are part of representations that “justify” the violence of settler-colonies. Inverting Berlant and Warner’s heterosex act that is shielded from public view, the artwork suggest that this explicit visualization forms part of the heterosexual matrix that supports the colonial project. The “proof of enjoyment” provides the affective justification of colonisation, being both the literal project of settlement (the reproduction of whiteness) and the reward for the public work of settlement. Demonstrating that these sequences are fake (as a media convention in which the orgasm is performed for the camera) raises important questions as to the authenticity of orgasm and its ongoing implication in the colonial project.
An interview with curator Leigh Robb was filmed in a pay by the hour "Love Hotel" in Sydney during which we discuss the themes of the exhibition while lying on a bed with pornography playing on a television just out of shot. Similarly to Pornoxotic, the intent of the interview was to combine different registers and have them generate an uncomfortable space of conflict for discourse.