“I Don’t Know” 2022
Silicone vibrator with silk, wool, cotton and acrylic weaving, glass, plastic & semi-precious beads, aluminium, glass crystals and Swarovski crystals.
“I Don’t Care” 2022
Silicone cock ring with silk, wool, cotton and acrylic weaving, glass, plastic & semi-precious beads, aluminium and Swarovski crystals.
The twinned works of “I Don’t Know” and “I Don’t Care” examine the larger cultural relationship we have with online pornograpy today. In a world where Pornhub gets more monthly hits than Amazon, Netflix and Twitter combined, comprising a third of all streaming traffic on the internet and creating as many CO2 emissions a year as the country of Belgium, how is something we consume at such levels so rarely considered or talked about?
Porn is often cited as the root cause of many contemporary sex-based issues such as perpetuated male violence against women and girls, the normalisation of rape culture and the depiction of toxic or violent sex acts lacking in consent, evidence of female pleasure and safe-sex practices such as condoms. Not to mention racist, sexist and fetishist tropes that can negatively impact marginalised genders and communities.
But is there anything wrong with porn per se? No. It’s been around for as long as humans have been making art and there is nothing wrong with healthy curiosity about sex. So how did we get here?
Starting as sex toys the objects are transformed into something less recognisable. Overly embellished in beads, crystals and woven threads they become gaudy and garish, disguising their original functionality they become a thing trying to be something else. Whilst stereotypically pink for girls and blue for boys their original purpose is hidden under a layer of seemingly sweet and pretty decoration with which we sugar coat the real uncomfortable subject underneath. Placed onto ceramic plates the objects highlight the hidden role porn plays in our everyday lives, the domestic homes and lives in which porn lives but is mostly unacknowledged.
Porn’s influence is embedded into our cultural lives and plays out in many ways both positive and negative. Often a catch all for blame porn is very rarely discussed in further depth despite the average age for kids to first see hardcore online pornography being 9 years old. The tech gap between parents and kids is widening all the time and is reflected in the vastly different experiences, language and concepts around sex and sexuality that exist between these two demographics also. Making it all the harder for much needed honest and genuinely educational conversations about sex and porn to happen.
Named so after the illuminating investigations into the gendered effects of patriarchy in the book “Why Does Patriarchy Persist” by Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider. Examining the move into “feminine self-silencing and masculine detachment – not knowing and not caring – is necessary for establishing hierarchy, which requires a loss of empathy by those on top and a loss of self-assertion by those below.” (Polity Press, 2018, P.41) This nod to the manifestation of “I Don’t Know” and “I Don’t Care” in to the mouths of young girls and boys serves to highlight the gendered effect that, often at times violent or degrading, porn made under patriarchy can reinforce.
What effect on new generations coming of age with free online hardcore pornography had?
When free online pornography replaces any other form good of Sex Ed where do we expect kids, and people in general, to learn about sex?
Is all porn ‘bad’? If so why do we still consume it at such rates? And if not how do we distinguish what’s ‘good’ and recognise the need for more positive porn in the context of Sex Ed?
If we consumed anything else on such a mass cultural scale wouldn’t we talk more about its influence and legacy?