The UCSC Women’s Center and the Feminism & Pornography Research Cluster present:
“Internet Art and the Economies of Porn”
The intersection of art and pornography on the radically dispersive Internet activates multiple discourses surrounding nudity, obscenity, feminism, voyeurism and exhibitionism, as well as the increasingly warring agendas of corporate profit and community and amateur ideals. As one commentator acknowledges, “[t]he debate over Internet porn isn’t community standards vs. free speech. It’s community standards vs. a free market.” Even as pornography is enviously acknowledged as a communications technology pioneer by the corporate sector, many artists are attuned to the implications of this envy. Though the artists that I will discuss deal ostensibly with pornography, they also negotiate many of the terms of pornography’s own negotiation of the Internet: its economies, its communities, its sexisms, and its surveillance.
Kelly Dennis is Associate Professor of Art History & the History of Photography at the University of Connecticut Storrs and is author of Art/Porn: A History of Seeing and Touching (Berg, 2009). Her work on photography, pornography, performance, and feminist art has appeared in several books and journals. She is currently at work on her second book, The Politics of the Sublime: Landscape Photography and the West.
This event was made possible by the financial support and co-sponsorships of the departments of Sociology; Literature; Art; History of Art & Visual Culture; Digital Arts & New Media; and American Studies. For accessibility information or accommodations, contact the Women’s Center at 459-2072 women@ucsc.edu or the Feminism & Pornography Research Cluster at npurcell@ucsc.edu.