#102 Pornographic Playground
Pornography functions as a playground for imagination, exploration, and escapism, loosening our ties to normative reality and generating a liminal space in which markers of identity, belonging, and normativity fall by the wayside. Gender and sexuality fracture and recombine, resonances and dissonances emerge, and one is no longer bound by the categories of human, animal, or thing. We are determined less by who we are and more by what we do, oscillating between roles, obscuring the binaries of gender, desire and sexuality, not tied to a direct title or role, but where desire leads us.
BDSM (Bondage, Dominance and Submission, Sadomasochism) is central to this curation, challenging power, cis-heteronormativity, and erotic convention through interviews and sexual imagery. It resembles a form of play, much like sex itself. Rather than a confined or deviant practice, BDSM offers a space to explore comforts and discomforts, preferences and aversions; it transforms, unsettles, and excites. Sexual enjoyment is framed not by the performer’s identity, but by the act itself. Crucially, BDSM is not presented as terror. Instead, the sensitivity, unspoken connection, and communication inherent to the practice redefines it as a labour of pleasure rather than punishment or violence, letting go of control and giving into matters of the body. Sensuality permeates the medium, even in scenes of BDSM, where delicate imagery is rendered through slow-paced, attentive shots. The informal, shaky videography of these encounters encourages intimacy, positioning the viewer as an active participant and challenging our own roles and positionality.
This channel foregrounds the mutability of identity, sexuality, and personhood through its depictions of pornography. Within these representations, power relations, dominance, and submission remain in constant flux, continually renegotiated rather than fixed. Sexual encounters become spaces in which the boundaries of the self can be explored, outlets that are deliberately and consensually embraced. As sexual beings, we are elastic, adapting through intuition and unspoken connection. We move according to the language of our bodies rather than the rigid scripts of social roles, gender expectations, or presupposed identities.
With works by: M.M. Serra, Morty Diamond, Cleo Übelmann, Rose Rosen, Barbara Hammer, and Marina Abramović. This Channel programme was created by Ellen Egan during her internship in 2025/2026
Films in dit programma
(USA, 1992, video, 16:36)
(USA, 2003, video, 16:56)
(Switzerland, 1986, video, 53:00)
(Israel, 2010, video, 33:43)
(USA, 1974, video, 04:01)
(Serbia, 2005, video, 16:00)