photo: Valerie-Siba Rousparast
Since 1997, each year people from the adult entertainment industry come together for the Venus erotic fair. Porn actors and actresses are there for meet and greets, exotic dancers and and sex workers from all kinds of genres are presenting their special acts of pleasing their audience.
You get to see some weird and fancy technological innovations. Plastic sex dolls that almost look human that are even heatable for an almost human, but still so un-human, artificial experience.
Another thing that seems to be up-and-coming are vibrators that can be managed via your Iphone. Your partner will wear it and you decide about the rhythm of vibration that you want them to be pleased. Oh, vibration is a big issue anyway. The one thing that actually fascinated me was the virtual life porn hub. You get to wear those huge glasses and watch 3D porn, whilst you stick your, at least in this scenario finger, into an artificial vagina/butt, which vibrates relating to the motions of the people you see in the porn. I can really see how this will be successful and at the same time it kind of worries me, because it really takes you out of real life. And to actually get lost in porn might not be the best idea…
There are a lot of toys and gimmicks you can use in real life with your partner, which is probably, why a lot of the visitors are young couples, who want to try something new. Get some cute colourful vibrators, some irritatingly wobbly, lube with taste and heating function, pubic hair toupets that look like emojis, sparkling jewellery for your vajayjay/peen or just wild bushes to comb through.
The fair doesn’t only focus on technological development, but also on human flesh, of course. For most people nothing triggers erotic feels more than nude bodies and they are all over the place here. Porn actresses and actors are standing in booths, ready to sign autographs and you can have your picture taken with them. There is a whole room designated to kinky pleasures, which shows everything from harnesses to whips, latex fashion and bondage equipment. Some people here enjoyed their pain a bit too much for my taste, like a guy, who was being spanked by a dominatrix and just didn’t want to leave her side. Other people didn’t enjoy it at all.
We got to see a bondage live show, where the dom tried to lift two performers in the air, hanging on ropes that were twisted around their breasts. The show had to be interrupted several times, because one of the performers was in too much pain. This was hard to watch and made me think of the fine line between performing an act and experiencing actual trauma of the body. Because while in mainstream porn the pain usually is real, the pleasure is mostly an act.
This year i went for the second time, since the fact that people come together in a room to look at – and discuss things that please them in bed or in front of their laptop has a weird kind of fascination for me from an anthropological point of view. I admire everyone, who works in the sex industry, am amazed by how diverse and inclusive porn has become during the last years and feel like there is a really great movement of emancipated, queer and feminist production companies and performers. I am glad that there are a lot of feminist actors and actresses, who combine their emancipation with their work surroundings and fight for secure, safe and reliable work conditions.
Continue reading about the Venus fair visit and its darker sides along with photos by Andrea D’Auria on page two!
