Project 1

Proposal

For this project I would like to explore and expose my points of view of the new legislation of the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) through the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 that came into effect last December.

This new legislation basically means that the following practices won’t be legal to produce and distribute in UK pornography. Some of the sexual acts that got banned are spanking, caning, aggressive whipping, penetration with any object “associated with violence”, physical or verbal abuse (regardless if consensual), urolagnia (known as watersports), role-playing as non-adults, physical restraint, humiliation, female ejaculation, strangulation, facesitting and fisting.

The reason of why I have chosen this topic is because in my opinion on this new legislation there appear to be no rational explanations for most of the rules, as for instance, the juxtaposition between the male and female ejaculation legality, or fellatio and facesitting legality. This is somethimg completely sexist in my opinion. Other banned acts are not sexist but seem to be straight away against BDSM community.

This new legislation have risen my concerns about censorship and of what sexual and speech freedom is.

My main idea of what I want to produce is a video installation. I’m going to record and take still images of everyday objects or non-sexual objects that are reproducing some of the banned acts and using sound from porn films as background sound. By doing this I will create a new meaning of what those acts are. I want to make the viewer rethink about their ideas about what is good/bad, harmful/harmless, right/wrong in sexuality and pornography.

I also want to make some sketches, collages, drawings& pictures to help develop the ideas for the video.

I will need photo and video camera, computer, software, objects to record, sound download form internet (or record it myself with audio equipment that I have at home, like recorder, mixer, sound card and sound software). I will also require a projector and speakers for the exposition.

Although I have been researching a lot and I haven’t found any other artist that have done something really similar to this, but anyway I found similarities with works (most of them are feminist or comic artists) from Carolee Scheemann, Shigeko Kubota, Lynda Benglis, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Anette Messager, Andres Serrano, Monica Cook, Santiago Sierra, Sardax, Drubskin, Eric Stanton…  

Artwork

Evaluation

First Project Evaluation

Sofia Mesa

This project’s aim has been to expose my points of view of the new legislation of the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) through the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 that came into effect last December.

I started by researching blogs and artists as well as news about the issue on The Independent and Huffington Post among others.

Although I haven’t researched most of the artist from my proposal, I’ve researched artists like Miles Aldridge, Valie Export, Santiago Sierra, Marlene Dumas, Judy Chicago, Jenny Holzer, Gran Fury Colective, Guerrilla Girls …

Then I listed some objects that I wanted to use and took notes about filming and editing for later book a camera and start recording.

I shot some scenes on my room and due to the poor illumination of my room I experienced problems with lighting. Later I tried to edit them in Premiere Pro, but after some weeks experiencing problems trying to sync the downloaded sound with my visual footage I gave up and thought that was maybe easier to shoot everything form scratch again. But this time I had shot the footage while listening with headphones the film sound.

Because of these technical problems and some doubts about the look of the final outcome I have been quite stuck on this project, but after shooting for second and third time I had much better results.

In addition I think that unconsciously I might had chosen to do video art because is something that I would fell more comfortable doing, but the reality is that I’m fed up of doing digital artwork and as a result I haven’t been as engaged as in other projects.