Porn aesthetics and archetypes are fascinating, sex on film has always been innovative, at the forefront of pushing technology and creativity. Being pushed to the margins means you’re forced to make new rules and create your own visions, processes and traditions. Porn world developed its own visual language, signs and semiotics.

This is the first in a new series we’re hoping to continue exploring where we look at traditional Porn stereotypes, archetypes, aesthetics and cliches and how we can explore, subvert or expand them. For this we were really lucky to have Dev and Kinsey who were down to get homoerotic for us, exploring some classic archetypes - play fighting, wrestling, leather bars, vests, sweat and skin we were lucky enough to be able to license the perfect brooding berlin goth gay club soundtrack from Boy Harsher and we were good to go.

I think sometimes we get some people assume or presume the work we make is pretty soft, and while I love softness and delicacy and I want to see more of it in the porn I watch, I also love the intensity of a quick fuck and a brutal punchy edit. There's something special about the the look of old adult films pre internet digitisation, there’s something extra private and taboo about the idea of vhs, it was the first format to make home movies without having to take your film for outsider processing accessible which meant it was the perfect format for your sexual exploits (see also: polaroid). Pre internet, you made your porn, especially if it was porn that subverted the heteronormative status quo on VHS tapes and copied and circulated them in your community, porn mailing lists and screening parties and brown paper bags were the distribution. We’re looking back at that time and that era, leather bars and vhs tapes.

Leather is extra sensual, it’s skin first and foremost. It’s tough and supple and hard and soft at the same time, I was massively influenced by the painter and tattoo artist Tamara Santibañez and her leatherscape Landscape paintings in making the pulsing leather backdrops in this film.

I asked Kinsey and Dev to bring their best leather and white vests and we got to work. This is where working with performers in collaboration is my favourite because they took our seed of an idea and expanded it beyond our perspective. Kinsey and Dev suggested and worked out the idea of injecting T and as someone who has an amount of needle phobia I’ve always found injections uncomfortable. Getting tested pretty regularly forced me to meet that fear head on but I also found that if I asked my phlebotomist if I could film the blood draw on my phone it gave me the focus and detachment to be able to watch. A camera is a good way to put distance between you and a subject. 

Because injections make me uncomfortable I’m also pretty fascinated with them, they’re also inherently related to sex for me: the ritualistic preparation, the phallic sharp point and the penetration of the skin, slow depression of the plunger, leaving liquid inside. Incredibly visceral and clinical at the same time. I love getting to confront and unpick what it is about something that gives me a visceral reaction.

Both Kinsey and Devorah are super hot and brought the best energy and ideas and didn't even complain when we had to huddle the heater because the warehouse space we were shooting in got cold. And they fucked on a hardwood floor for a few hours so they deserve all my admiration. Real troopers.

enjoy, love Vex
x

CONTENT NOTES
injection, play fighting, biting, spanking

MUSIC
Boy Harsher - Love

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