Imaging public sex utopias: a production workshop

Spring 2025 Haverford College Visual Studies Department

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This praxis course examines the tension between art and that which is considered obscene: porn, public shamelessness, and deviant queer sexualities such as kink and sex work. By delegating the two as separate (often opposing) camps, we run the risk of further marginalization of a key component of a thriving humanity, sexual wellness. In an age of grindr, incels, shadowbanning, mass incarceration, and pandemia, we will investigate the role artists, activists, or accomplices play in documenting, destigmatizing, and expressing collective possibilities. We will develop projects that explore the powerful potential of the utopian imagination, intimacy, and somatic embodiment as tools of critical inquiry and discursive protest. The latter will be researched using techniques of GIF animation, self portraiture, and performance art. We will also read texts and view films that contextualize the politics of sexual freedom while considering the elusive yet paramount impact of art on culture. Students will complete creative visual art assignments, keep a journal of their own lived experiences of bodily autonomy, craft research-based projects, and present a final exhibition of their work. 

Photos by Patrick Moreno