We’ve been working on something behind the scenes while the pandemic still prevents us from making films in the traditional way, it's a new way of making and showing porn and although it's born out of limitation it can hopefully open up new avenues of possibility.
Tangent: I've been thinking about eroticism a lot recently, often in conversations with friends and lovers and community we come back to centre on the frustration that life in pandemic times has been robbed of energy, excitement, spontaneity, the magic and unquantifiable essence of the delicious joy of existence - unexpected connection, touch, new experience, community, anticipation. Not just about missing sex but that’s absolutely it too but something more universal - the state of feeling alive and engaged. Audre Lorde writes in her transformative essay Uses of the Erotic about the idea of eroticism encompassing and transcending sex to be an essential, vibrant life force and experience of being.
“For the erotic is not a question only of what
we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully
we can feel in the doing.”
This has felt almost entirely lacking from the repetitive, function our lives in lockdown have become. Treading water. A slow and circling holding pattern, going through the motions of existing - without living. Media - literature, music, art, pornography, whatever can be an escape from that, a doorway into our imaginations and an avenue to try and reconnect with our essence while we're physically limited.
With Four Chambers I always wanted to explore the atmosphere, the context, the drive, the energy, the emotion and the mythology of sex not just the functional practice of it. I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone that you can have the mechanics of fucking without any of the intensity of eroticism and intensely erotic experiences that don’t ever involve traditional sex. Connecting with being, inhabiting your physical body and exploring your erotic imagination is a powerful tool and a gift and it’s something I’ve been missing painfully this past year.
Venus Apexis a new element of the site that tries to think out what that erotic imagination can look like and be in a digital space. It’s an archive, a feed and a gallery of intertwining references and connections to be investigated and experienced. Think of it like a deconstructed Four Chambers film in gestation - it contains some more intimate, DIY home made porn of mine away from super constructed scenes or full length films, it’s also where some of our ideas, experiments and tests will live before they make it into full length films.
It fills a gap for me left by the loss of online and physical spaces where sex could exist next to other ideas and experiences. I’m including a passage I wrote about the loss of Tumblr a few years back:
“Sex wasn’t this separate, shameful thing, it was allowed it to exist right next to every other facet of our experience. We shared it, discussed it, debated it and curated it... It was out in the open. It allowed you to become a collector of your own desires, displaying them and celebrating them proudly, rather than having them spoon fed by a tube site algorithm. If I look back at my blog I can see the gestation of every idea for every film I’ve made and probably every film I’ll make since."
Sex can and should be informed by other things that aren’t immediately or inherently sexual. This all makes up a part part of the erotic charge that infuses our experience. There's some very explicit things here and some that in isolation are seemingly innocent.
Fucking is everything and fucking is nothing. Once we loose the boundaries of strict definition it opens us up to exploring our sexual imaginations and connections outside of what we keep in the locked and private little box we think of as s e x.
This is my personal, pornographic visual diary, my sketch book, my ideas and inspirations archive.
It will be updated continually and always in flux with new posts all the time mixed and reordered to make new connections. Hopefully in viewing it you can see links to Four Chambers films gone by and those we’re going to make. Supporters get access to the whole feed straight away, with everyone else getting some of the less explicit posts.
Play videos, click through gallery posts and explore the linked full length films from the captions and dig around. It rewards a little digging rather than passive scrolling. Repeat viewing encouraged.
I hope it's a site of exploration and escape for you as building it has been for me.
