INTERVIEW

Faith Holland

Interventions

6 Porn

In your practice you of en use humour as a means to critique and create unexpected interventions, based on the deconstruction of the image and technology. Why do you f nd humour useful as a form of critique, and how does it open up space for you to challenge traditional gender representations?

Humor is a great way to engage people that might otherwise be alienated from my work. Maybe someone doesn’t want to think about the way pornography caters to an assumed male audience or does not want to think critically about their relationship with their phone. If I can make them laugh, I can bring them into my work regardless--it’s the oldest trick in the book.

You of en reimagine the screen as a means to raise questions about the replacement of a f esh-and-blood human lover with a machine, and to comment on the mechanization of the process of love. Could you talk a lit le about these provocations and how they open up your own understanding of the self, the body and technology?

The screen is the dominating interface of our times; I’m writing directly on one right now as I “type.” While we used to engage with our technologies and media at a distance-through mouses, keyboards, remotes, etc.--that distance has been dramatically shortened by touch screens. It gives the illusion of being less mediated. In my work, this direct engagement becomes important when we touch a text or image from a lover or pornography. I believe that a kind of libidinal residue from this interaction becomes part of our association with the device. It lends to our overall pleasure of using the device itself, and leads us to feel af ectionate toward the object itself.

Your work is both sex and porn positive. In your video series Porn Interventions, you f lmed yourself shaving your legs and licking a camera, and uploaded these videos to the porn site RedTube. What was the reaction from users of the platform (if any), and how important is it for feminist work to operate and exist in spaces that t pically sexualise or fetishise the female body?

There wasn’t too much reaction from users of the site. I think people most often probably just keep looking for the content they actually want, rather than my strange interjection.

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