Soma rhei, or the New Vision of Porn
We are all libidos that are too viscous and too fluid.
(Deleuze and Guattari 67)
Each of us is fluid locked up in a fixed form.
(SUKA OFF, personal communication)
(Deleuze and Guattari 67)
Each of us is fluid locked up in a fixed form.
(SUKA OFF, personal communication)
ABSTRACT: The format of the essay is meant to be more fluid than a traditional academic article. It revolves around the (post)pornographic experimental movie Carnal Fluidity (part of the Inside Flesh project) by the Polish artistic group SUKA OFF. Synthetic and organic fluids are at the very centre of the film's fluid imaginary, this "new vision of porn” (as the creators call it) that may be read as pointing towards a rheum-ontology (Greek rheuma = that which flows) and an onto-hydraulics (the self-regulation of flows in and across the living and nonliving realms). This is done both at the level of representation (fluids, pipes, tubes, bodily discharges) and that of visual effects (image manipulation that fluidifies the visible according to the logic of a stream of sexual fantasies). The rub of our argument is that even though Carnal Fluidity does not seem to openly and programmatically challenge the phallic imaginary that organizes the relations between bodies, genders, sexualities and identities, it sexualizes the phallic order to the point where its claims to power dissolve in the excessive fluidity that dominates the movie. The result is that individual bodies can no longer be viewed as vehicles for a liberal-humanist subjecthood (male, female or otherwise), but rather become extensions of a monstrous onto-hydraulic machine for the production of anonymous, inhuman sex.
Read the whole article HERE.
