[-empyre-] Starting the First Week / Valente and Ziyalan

[Peter Valente]

Hi Alan,

I have no problem with 'selfies.' Of course, my own photos are not
'selfties' since no one in the photos took pictures of themselves. I
photographed all of them. But I can imagine ways in which 'selfies'
can be used to make interesting images. And I can't remember his name,
but a filmmaker shot an entire film on a smartphone and it won some
award in Berlin. I shot an entire film with the camera focused on
myself.

I don't think my images are 'pornographic.' And there's an interesting
writer I'm translating, Guillaume Dustan, whose extreme depictions of
sex acts and drug use are without explanation, or defense, or
rationalization. Edmund White's blurb on one of Dustan's books:
"...the book features a narrator whose wants are to fuck, listen to
house music and visit London. 'Let the Good Times Roll' is the motto
of this ecstatic celebration of a way of life unaffected by the
demands of safe sex and queer politics."

Why only women? I found the images interesting. The nudes happen to be
of women. But admittedly my photos exist in a kind of extreme world,
you might even call it an ideal space, where pleasure is never
political and needs no defense.

Thanks for the questions, Alan.

Peter



On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 6:11 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Hi Peter, I have a couple of questions. What do you 'think about' selfies?
> And do you see the pornographic images as a doubling in a sense, and why
> women only? This isn't a critical query; I'm really curious.
>
> Thanks for the description and images, Alan
>
> On Tue, 1 Nov 2016, Peter Valente wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> ==
> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
> ==
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu