photos: Pornceptual
Their art made you gasp, their parties made you sweat – and always left you craving for more. For almost 5 years the Berlin collective Pornceptual has been disrupting the worlds of art and porn; first Berlin then the world. But don’t you think they’re out of breath, after half a decade, they are only sharpening their teeth and getting ready to fight: Fittingly, their freshly launched third magazine is called “Guerilla”.
Over 50 visual artists are featured in “Porn Guerilla”, well-known names such as Erika Lust appear alongside young queer and feminist artists from all over the world. Styles, subjects and explicit depictions vary, but throughout the work is connected by themes of unconventionality, struggle, and fight, using erotic art as a tool of resistance against oppressive power structures and censorship.
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by Andy | Art, Party
ALFA / Ich – Ein Groupie
‘Tis the season! Once a year, Berlin becomes the host for a film festival of a different kind. So all of you sexy people, sex lovers and kinky minds beware. While the Venus Sex Fair focuses on the kind of Porn that is rather sexist, the Porn Film Festival offers an alternative to normative stereotypes. In Germany’s oldest cinema, the Moviemento, they show serious documentaries about the work and life in the sex industry. They show movies with a more humorous approach to sex, with conceptual aesthetics and extraordinary stories. Pornographic films can be more than mainstream. The ones shown during this festival are all about authentic lust, sexy non-normative bodies, queer sex and erotic encounters between emancipated individuals with empowering narratives.
There are stories about fetishes, about homosexual pleasure and intimacy as well as short movies about the lives of refugees. Sexual assault and trauma are another aspect of sexuality that the festival also addresses. Wherever there is sex there is also issues of power and dominance. Where there is intimacy there can be pain and it is especially significant how this film festival gives a holistic view on sexuality with all its extremes. The dark ones as well as the euphoric ones. Besides showing movies the festival also offers a great range of events all focusing on sex, porn and politics. There are workshops, panels, readings and performances. Get a first glimpse here.
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by Guest Author | Videos
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.
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by Guest Author | Events
photo: Bad Bruises
Out there in the world, Germany, and Berlin in particular, have a reputation of being sexually liberal places. Nudist beaches, sex parties, uncensored breasts on television, experimental sex practices, acceptance towards various sexual orientations and identities. You get the general idea. We Berliners are wild, excessive, and constantly horny – well, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world.
As a Berlin resident and German citizen I would never say that Germans are particularly naughty or more sex-crazy than other nations, nor did I have the impression that Berlin is sexually more open than other cities in Europe. Yes, maybe we have a few sex clubs more than other cities, but I doubt that there aren’t any places like that in the rest of the world. They might just be more behind closed doors and less publicly advertised. Here sex was always there: swingers clubs, dark rooms, fetish parties. But it was almost an alternative scene from my perspective, you could only see it if you knew where to look. It was the underground. But this is changing.
Now there is sex positivity, body positivity, feminist porn, and you could say a general awaking in the society from the bad dream that sex is something to be ashamed of and to keep in private. People are embracing sex more and with it, their own bodies and desires. Isn’t this something we should all strive for? Read on…
by Nikos | Stories, Videos
“Are they masturbating?” I asked the artist Luisa Pohlmann when I first saw her new magnificent photorealistic portrait series of paintings showing women washing themselves and enjoying apparently whatever they were doing. But the answer to my unsolicited and quiet indiscrete question was neither a yes or no but rather a smile of the artist. Maybe my phantasies to her works that will be presented in a solo exhibition opening next Monday are way to concrete for the subtle art of Pohlmann.
The exhibition WASCHTAG leads us into a world of images that illustrate both processes of outer cleaning, as well as inner purification (maybe of a very dirty fantasy). The beautiful portraits of young women, oil on canvas or on paper, who act in various poses, sometimes with inward attention, sometimes in direct contact with the viewer, but always with great intensity. We encounter female characters, who, by being focused entirely on themselves – on their innermost being, reveal themselves to the viewer. Their authenticity gives them beauty inside as well as outside but also strength that arises from their personal confrontation with their inner self. See an exclusive preview of her unique work after the jump and find out more infos about the exhibition.
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by Claudio | Art
Berlin is full of surprises and in some way, everything goes. The queer cyberpunk post-porn series Neurosex Pornoia by Eric Pussyboy and Abigail Gnash is one of these surprises that hit us out of nowhere. Of course, it should not be a surprise because with projects like Pornceptual, the big success of the Porn Film Festival and long-forgotten sex clubs like KitKat on the rise again a pornographic video series was just about the next natural step. With its geeky, punky and trashy style the show is pretty much a niche thing but with its references to sci-fi and porn, it will surely tickle the interest of a bigger audience. It tells the story of a world where sex can be translated into code that can be downloaded, but of course, this goes terribly wrong and what was meant to be a pleasure becomes something else. So far there are two episodes out that have been screened at various film festivals and events all over the world.
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by Frank | TV, Videos
Considering that the GDR was a little bit known for a more liberal attitude towards nudity with all their nude beaches it comes off as a bit surprising that pornography was actually forbidden in former East Germany. Obviously this didn’t stop the people from shooting porn in their own homes and illegally distribute the material along with copies from porn magazines and photos smuggled in from the West amongst each other.
On the public front the GDR had an almost obsessive urge to portrait the healthy and fit bodies of the people of their country, especially their soldiers, in the newspapers and magazines, and did this quite often in a very revealing fashion. These type of photographs became a bit the common material for masturbation for the youth who otherwise had few sources for sexual content of any kind.
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, iconic figure of the queer scene of Berlin in the time of the GDR and founder of the Gründerzeitenmuseum, was one of the few collectors of erotic and pornographic material that was distributed in the former East that made it to the museums. We have some of the material for you after the jump. Enjoy!
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by Frank | Photos
photo: Fred Bisonnes © FalconStudios.com
If you are reading this from your office computer right now I would advise you to look if anyone’s watching you before you scroll further down, because it’s gettin’ kinda hot down there. We’ve teased it already in our Sexy Berlin Guide and now we have a full super-sized preview of the upcoming big group exhibition at the Schwules Museum that is celebrating its grand opening night this weekend. Titled Porn That Way the exhibition is a comprehensive retrospective of the imagery of queer pornography starting somewhere in the late 19th century with blurry obscure photographs and ending in the year 2014 with the latest artsy photoshoots of modern-day porn stars. The recent Porn Film Festival already proved how closely pornography can be linked to the arts and I think this exhibition will bring it even one step further. For our preview we selected mostly harmless photographs as we wanted to give you an impression of the aesthetic of the works rather than making you horny. For the real deal – and believe me, some parts of the exhibition are full on – you will have to visit the Schwules Museum on Saturday evening. The exhibition will run until middle of May. Enjoy!
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by Frank | Art, Photos
photo: Eylül Aslan
The next story from our Strange Magic series is probably the most sexual one. And sure, a lot of Berlin’s magic has to do with the sexual intrepidness and insatiable appetite of the inhabitants. Did we call Berlin a slut? Several times! But did we ever tell you how the slutty daily live of the Berliners look like? Not so much for now. Thankfully the story Happy Kater submitted by blogger and author Kevin Junk introduces innocent souls like us to the dark waters of the gay piranha pool that is Möbel Olfe on a Thursday night and the morning after. To read his story, you have to continue in German.
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by Guest Author | Stories
