
BOOK IT! Itziar Bilbao Urrutia is giving a talk on porn with lawyer Myles Jackman at Uncensored. BANNER, l-r: Uncensored contributors Marne Lucas, whose film The Operation is showing; Marnie Scarlet (photo: Doralba Picerno), who is performing; Felix Ruckert, who is hosting a workshop
Uncensored festival explores art where porn and activism meet.
Taking place in London this month, Uncensored is a female-organised festival dedicated to art at the intersection of pornography and activism. Its three-day programme features 35 artists, sex practitioners and activists from the UK and overseas. And, as our preview reveals, fetish/BDSM interests are well represented
Organised by a female-led team, Uncensored will bring together more than 35 artists, sex practitioners and activists from the UK and abroad, between Friday and Sunday May 17 and 19 at three venues in Hackney Wick, London E9.
“BDSM/Fetish was a main topic that interested us from the very early stages of the conception of the festival,” press officer Natalia Damigou-Papoti told The Fetishistas.
“In our initial discussions we were talking a lot about the 2014 Audiovisual Media Services Regulations that banned the well-known series of acts [from being depicted]. So it was really crucial for us to bring to the fore a conversation on what is considered ‘abusive’ and ‘offensive’.
“Other than that,” Natalia added, “the phrase that we use to describe what we intend to do sums up the festival quite accurately, I believe.
“We want to create a dialogue between art, pornography and queer-feminist politics, in an immersive, sex-positive space for collective reflection, exploration and critique.“
Alongside Natalia, the other members of the all-female organising team are executive producer Olivia Carr-Archer, artistic director Lidia Ravviso, social media promoter Roosa Herranen, exhibition curator Aleksandra Wojt, press assistant Nicole Richardson and texts editor Sofia Vranou.
Among the event’s partners are two well-known London-based purveyors of pervery: Fetish Alternative Boutique and Klub Verboten.
Uncensored’s programme embraces workshops, performances, talks, a party, a roundtable discussion and three film events (including two film premières). There will also be a mixed media exhibition and film screenings selected through an international open call.
Items likely to be of particular interest to fetishist folk and BDSMers are spread throughout the three-day programme.
Uncensored’s fetish & BDSM content
For example, the evening of Friday May 17 features a performance at 21:30 by the notorious Mouse. Her 50 Shades of Trash will offer ‘some aquatic madness garnished with debauched shock value tricks to a drum ’n’ bass style’.
The programme notes entreat guests to ‘please make sure you sit at the front and don’t forget your umbrella’. But we think that for some folk, making sure you don’t sit at the front might be slightly safer advice.
Later on Friday (23:15-01:15) is a film programme tagged Uncensored and Hot, combining the British premiere of Taiwanese-American director She Lea Cheang’s Fisting Club Ep.01 with a selection of ten further film shorts.
Other titles with kinkster appeal in this movie marathon include As You Wish, My Lady by Jo Pollux and Sadie Lune; Intoxicate Yourself by Candy Flip; cult classic The Operation from Marne Lucas (aka CuntemporaryArtist) and Jacob Pander; and Anane Sofie Steen Sverdrup’s Boy Oh Boy.
Saturday 18’s offerings with particular perv-pleasing potential begin at 17.00 with Let Free Your Dominant Self, a two-hour, limited availability workshop presented by Marti Birch.
Exploring BDSM through bodywork and participatory play, international mentor Marti promises to help her
Birch’s workshop is followed at 19:30 by the talk Yes, But Is It Porn? In the Outer Reaches of Sex: Fetish and Obscenity, presented by Urban Chick Supremacy Cell founder Itziar Bilbao Urrutia.
Participating with her are sex worker/artist Misha Mayfair and Myles Jackman, Britain’s leading obscenity lawyer and legal director of Open Rights Group. In 2014, Jackman helped Itziar win a famous victory against classification of her femdom website as a site liable to video regulation and censorship (see Fetishistas report — link below).
Queen of twisted latex burlesque and Fetishistas favourite Marnie Scarlet is one of three performers featured in the Uncensored Party (from 22:00 to 03:00).
At 01:00 Marnie will perform Total Banker, a piece that wonders whether bankers wank and ‘explores the relationship between masculinity, today’s economy and the nature of finance capitalism’. All in rubber, of course.
Micha Stella’s Play With Consent
Sunday 19’s programme features, among other gems, Play With Consent, a limited availability workshop by Micha Stella. From 13:30 to 16:30, it will examine the notions of offence and danger and their intersection with consent and power.
Artist, bodyworker and filmmaker Micha ‘explores gender, sexuality, identity, love and relationships through an ironic, erotic, feminist and queer point of view’. Since 2017 she has been co-curating the Xplore festivals in Rome, Barcelona and Copenhagen with Felix Ruckert, who is also appearing at Uncensored.
In total across the three days, the Uncensored programme offers a well-balanced selection of five workshops, seven live performances, three talks, three film events, one round-table discussion, a mixed media exhibition and a party.
Other speakers, workshop presenters and performers taking part in Uncensored include Fluida Wolf, Becky O’Brien, Lina Bembe, Bishop Black, Eli Agrup, Orlando Myxx, Liad Hussein Kantarowicz and Whiskey Chow.
And unlike some programmes of this kind, all events on all three days run consecutively, with no overlapping or concurrent times. This means that those with the interest and energy could in theory attend all events.
Tickets are available for each individual event, with admission costs ranging from free to £30. Day and weekend passes are also available, with prices ranging from £15 to £50 depending on the options you choose to include in your Saturday/Sunday passes.
All tickets must be bought in advance from the Uncensored website’s ticket shop. There are no tickets on the door.
The three Hackney Wick venues hosting Uncensored events are: The Old Baths (Friday); plus The Yard Theatre and Hub67 (Saturday and Sunday).
Venue addresses are:
The Old Baths, 80 Eastway, London E9 5JH;
The Yard Theatre, 2A Queens Yard, London E9 5EN;
Hub 67, 67 Rothbury Road, London E9 5HA.
Full information about each day’s programme — including a wealth of biographical info and pictures for each of the workshop and talk hosts — can be found on the Uncensored website (below), which gets top marks for clarity of presentation and ease of navigation!
uncensoredfest.com
uncensoredfestival/facebook/events
thefetishistas.com/itziar-wins-appeal
doralba.com
BELOW: Some Uncensored events and participants. Click a thumbnail to view image/start slideshow
Published May 12, 2019
Tags: Community, Exhibitions, Fetish Video, Legal, Performers, Porn Issues, Talks, Workshops