Arse Elektronika 2011: SCREW THE SYSTEM
monochrom‘s Conference on sex, technology, class, and culture.
September 29 thru October 2, 2011
San Francisco, USA
The
remarkable diversity of human behavior across cultures and classes also
extends to sex and technology. Most discussions in this area tend to
make certain assumptions about the culture, class, and race of the
participants. Technologically represented sex tends to be ableist and
heterocentric. Who gets left out of this, what effects does this have,
and what would it look like to include them?
Is there working
class, middle class and upper class porn? How does the commercial sex
industry reproduce and enforce racial, gender, and class exploitation
and dominance? How do people use sex and sexual technology to transgress
or change social status? How can DIY porn and sex tech counter the
social injustices reproduced by the commercial sex industry? Does gay
porn make use of the class, race, and power tropes found in heterosexual
pornography, and if so, how?
Is kinkiness a luxury? What does
kink from different social classes look like? Can economic realities
poison the power dynamics of a D/S relationship? What are the
demographics of people admitted to hospitals with weird objects up their
asses? Does activity in a swinger or BDSM scene act as bridging social
capital? Are there class dynamics at work in the feminist debate over
porn?
How and why do governments intervene in sexualities? When
do governments shape or use sexual desire, both implicitly and
explicitly? Can sex tech challenge the future of biopolitics and what
Michel Foucault calls “biopower” (the subjugation of bodies and the
control of populations by modern states)?
What are the labor
conditions of non-Western workers who make most of the world’s sex toys?
What’s the environmental footprint of a technologically assisted
orgasm? How does the criminalization or stigma of sex tech production
harm the communities in which it is produced? What’s the product
life-cycle and planning horizon of sex tech? What are the barriers to
entry for sex tech production? How important is intellectual property to
sex tech, and how is it enforced?
What does production,
regulation, distribution, and consumption of sex tech look like outside
of North America, Western Europe, and Japan? How do state-sponsored
religions or religious states interact with these issues? How do
majority Muslim cultures differ from one another and from non-Muslim
cultures on these issues? What’s the intersection of sex tourism and sex
tech? Is Japan’s pornographic dominance in the Asian market an
exception to the Korean wave? How does a country’s pornography (or lack
thereof) reflect its culture? Who consumes racist pornography?
How
do the class and cultural impacts of differential access to shifting
reproductive technologies like IVF, surrogacy (especially international
surrogates), egg and sperm donors, birth control, and abortions affect
the ways people have sex and construct relationships? Do these
technologies or their social deployment enforce heteronormativity? How
could the sex tech industry positively impact control and awareness of
STIs?
What’s the intersection of sex tech and hospitals or
hospice care? Where are the sex toys for the elderly? Where are the sex
toys for prisoners? What are the pornography surfing habits of homeless
people in libraries? Can technology meaningfully contribute to solutions
for sexual social problems like rape? Should the government allow or
require masturbation aids in prisons to reduce prison rape? Should your
health insurance be paying for your vibrator? How do your sex toys hurt
you? What are the health risks of using everyday objects as sex toys
when you can’t afford the good stuff?
Who buys sex tech? Is sex
technology a luxury? Does the demand elasticity for sex tech vary across
subcultures? By age, sexual orientation, race, etc? How much does the
average lesbian couple spend on sex toys? What are the substitutes
employed to or within sex tech if it’s unaffordable or unavailable? Is
consumption of sex tech correlated with any other social significant
behaviors or consumptions, positive or negative? How do distribution
methods affect who consumes sex tech? How will the DIY movement change
the sex tech market? Will we be able to print our on sex toys on rapid
prototyping machines?
Who can afford to challenge sex tech?
With talks, workshops and performances by:
Griffin Boyce, Jesse Darling, Laura G. Duncan, Adam Flynn, Rich Gibson, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Gopinaath Kannabiran, Heather Kelley, Jonathan Mann, Ned Mayhem, Maggie Mayhem, Maymay, Aaron Muszalski, Eleanor Saitta, Douglas Spink, Kitty Stryker, X&Y — and more!