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This article was originally published at Obscena magazine.

What solution would there be for the performing arts, if we are constantly talking about crisis? And, at a point when the borders between reality and fiction fill out theaters throughout the world, has anyone remembered how pornography has long ago reinvented the body? Let us reflect upon that, like in a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Sunday afternoon. There is nothing interesting on TV. Is it too early to find revelations on the screen? It is also too early to abandon ourselves in porn and drugs. Who knows if it is not a good time to ask uncomfortable questions. Things like “What is going to happen to the performing arts? What future do they have?” keep ringing in my head. “What a pathetic way to spend the weekend”, we immediately reprimand ourselves when we realize we are making such questions. But actually there is nothing better to do, that´s why…

Only when we superficially observe the mechanisms that shape artistic production do we realize how everything is connected. In post-industrial European societies, we invented a perverse drawer we call “culture”, in which we place every threatening object. We feel proud of this drawer, because we feel it is one the main things that separate us from “the others”: without blushing we continue to believe ourselves to be the paradigm – the paradigm of “civilization”.

Thus, our states invest (a derisory amount of their resources) in this artifact and we happily abandon ourselves to a self-complacent tranquility: we are better, “we” have a “Culture Ministry”. We do not realize that which we call “culture” is a destructive artifact that eliminates any political capacity in artistic practices. The strategy is very simple: it is about creating borders, containers, able to impose themselves and isolate any intention to change the bourgeois capitalist order. We have seen it a thousand times: however ill-received (and even resulting) the works of Rodrigo Garcia, Jérôme Bel, Vera Mantero, Franko B, Romeo Castellucci, to name a few randomly, perform either within a theater, a festival or a cultural policy plan, etc.

All these disguises are able to remove with unusual efficiency the political capacity of any artistic proposal however “uncomfortable” they may be. Everything ends up reinforcing the capitalist status quo because once it is all inside “culture”, any possibility of intervening in the world disappear. For sure, the system fails sometimes and suddenly there are escapes that break through these covers protecting and isolating “culture”. But let´s not be fooled: these are sheer accidents, once identified, they are subjected to deactivation process.

The panorama is not very stimulating: but maybe there is a way out from the potentia gaudendi Beatriz Preciado recently rescued from Spinoza’s philosophy. According to what the brilliant philosopher and activist proposes “the orgasmic force is the sum of the excitation potentialities inherent to each living molecule. The orgasmic force does not seek its automatic resolution. It rather aspires to prolong itself in time and space, to everything and everyone, in every moment and every place. It is the force that transforms the world into pleasure. The orgasmic force unites at the same time every somatic and psychic force, putting every biochemical and every structure of the soul at stake”[1].

“What distinguishes potentia gaudendi is not its non-permanent and highly flexible quality, but above all the impossibility of being possessed or preserved. Potentia guadendi as energetic foundation of farmacopornism, it does not allow itself to be reduced to an object neither can it be transformed into private property” [2] (The resonance of this last definition, proposed by Peggy Phelan in her famous The Ontology of Performance (1995) is both surprising and exciting!). Thus, if the problem is verifying that through the artifact of “culture”, the capacity for “doing” is subtracted from artistic practices, who knows if we haven´t reached the heart of the problem? But how to recover the “orgasmic force” of the arts? How to liberate artistic practices from the alienating clutches of “culture”?

The answer is in pornography. And it will be even more, if we are able to liberate ourselves from certain puritan limitations installed in the most invisible “parts” of our consciousness. If we could do that, then we would have a real notion of how much the current artistic practices have to learn from pornography. It is even possible to think that only the artistic proposal that approach pornography (intentionally or accidentally) are the ones that are able to effectively escape from the shrouded deactivation imposed by “culture”. Who knows if porn isn´t the last opportunity art has to reinvent the raincoats of isolation that push it apart from the world and to regain its capacity for politics and action? And there must be an effort to include porn in all its extent. Pornography should not be confused with the exhibition of images of evident and raw sexual content. As Andrés Barba and Javier Montes propose, the pornographic object is the object which we establish an excitation commitment [3] with. Therefore the pornographic experience can take place with any object (not only images that reproduce sexual acts), as long as we are willing to abandon ourselves in excitation, as long as we desire the object to act upon our body’s capacity for pleasure. Thus, art, just like pornography, should be able to make us ejaculate each time, every time. We should admit that going out to watch a show implicates being penetrated, every time. And this is not only going to activate intense pleasure processes, but it will also dissolve the limits that separate us from the piece. What pornography does is to take representation to the body of those who use this representation. The excitation provoked by pornography is a perfect example of how the limits between the subject and the object – the I and the you – the spectator and the piece; the spectator and the author, etc, may convert into something hazy. Finally, it is about knowing how to escape the isolating envelopment of “culture” that does nothing but materialize the bourgeois fears regarding artistic practices, creating “safe” spaces (museums, theaters, galleries, fairs, festivals, etc.) which push the pieces away from our bodies, in a pathetic paternalist alarmism. And it is more and more clear that the body is the answer, the place for revolution.

But let´s not be confused: I do not refer to the “body” as an abstract problem, as a theme for highbrow debates. I am talking about the body itself, the flesh in which each of us live our pains, the organs in which episodes of private pleasure take place. This is the setting in which artistic practices will recover its potentia gaudendi, its orgasmic force, its capacity to chance the world and produce knowledge. If there is any hope that the arts become alive, then, first, “culture” should dissappear, second, we should liberate all artistic practices that are placed inside the isolating drawer and allow them to transform and subvert our daily practices. Then, the spectators will have a responsibility, because there are things that we can do. Let´s begin to use the products of “culture” the same way we use pornography. Let´s go to the theater willing to cum. Let´s demand the pieces to provoke convulsions of pleasure in us. Let´s demand that each piece leave a mark in our skin and become part of our body, our memory and our biography. Let´s enjoy all these new representation devices that explore ways to make the barriers that separate us from the world. Access and register at Xtube. Let yourslef go, be amused by the amount of people willing to display their own flesh, convinced to see the real world, in which they are participating in a glorious race. Let´s learn, once and for all, everything porn has to teach us.

[1] Preciado, Beatriz, 2008, Testo Yonqui, Espasa, Madrid.

[2] ibidem

[3] Barba, A. E Montes, J. 2007, La ceremonia del porno, Anagrama, Barcelona

Jaime Conde-Salazar is Spanish, has an Art History degree (Universidade Complutense de Madrid) and master in Performance Studies (New York University, 2002). He has collaborated as dance critic with  “Por La danza” (Madrid), “SuzyQ” (Madrid), “Ballet/Tanz” (Berlim), “Mouvement” (Paris), “Hystrio” (Roma) e “Obscena” (Lisboa). He is part of the editorial council of “Cairon. Revista de Ciencias para la Danza”.