<nettime> Internet Pornography as Gift

[Katrien Jacobs <k.jacobs@beatmail.com>]

INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY AS GIFT

Moving from town and town, I stumble across the censor's statement 'this is
not the type of town for your pornography. Being in the academic
profession, my choices are limited to suburbs and wheatbelts, I have to be
careful with my choice of expertise, and often stay in Small and Medium
towns. I swallow this information from the censor's mouth and try to
imagine other spaces - more suitable for the distribution of provocative
images and ideas on sexuality. I am not so much excited about debates
around commercial Internet pornography, would rather target the commercial
porn makers with unusual and non-generic products made by artists and
amateurs, sexual perverts, sexperts and community activists, performance
artists, low-budget filmmakers, s/m performers and net.artists.

When I lived and worked in Smalltown, Western Australia, I witnessed the
emergence of new conservative censorship legislation which aimed to stop
the Internet porn boom altogether. In my experience, smalltowns are a
remote places which make a disproportionate use of Internet communication
for the consumption of pornographic products. But Western Australia's
imagined sense of place corresponds with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's vision of
development through secluded existence.  Within such a logic, Smalltown
residents must be protected from global waves of technology and
pornography.  However, even though the WA government installed the
draconian Censorship Act of 1996, some local and national anti-censorship
bodies kept nurturing a climate of support for artists and writers working
on sexuality. (See the State of Censorship http://rene.efa.org.au/censor)
In Smalltown, WA, I managed to set up festivals and lively debates around
pornographic films and performances that had "artistic merit" and were made
"for the public good" (the two major gaps in WA Censorship Act).

I just about arrived in Mediumtown, USA and find the American climate more
tremulous than Smalltown, more uptight than several years ago when I used
to promote pornographic art more spontaneously and nearly got kicked out of
a university in one of the suburbs of Washington DC (More specifically, I
lost my funding). I wonder what has happened since I left the USA in 1997?
First, the  Federal Government made its statement against the
Communications Decency Act and pronounced that "the strength of the
Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon chaos and
cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects". Next,
government agencies started to convince Internet Service Providers that
they can have fruitful business regardless of censorship, that they can
easily monitor objectionable porn content by installing appropriate
software programs.

This situation is really alarming as we can see in developments in the UK,
where a pact between government and Internet industries has resulted in an
Internet Watch Foundation which argues in its launch statement that: "The
internet is not a legal vacuum. The law applies to activities on the
Internet as it does to activity not on the Internet. If something is
illegal 'off-line' it will also be illegal 'online' ". (See their site
http://www.iwf.org.uk).The Internet Watch Foundation professes a Smalltown
ethical code yet has become more skilled at controlling the specific
workings and qualities of the net.

In order to make a case for the continued distribution of radical sexuality
and pornographic visions on the net, I will propose some reflections on
pornography as gift. The Internet can hardly be compared to a welcoming
community space such as women's erotica store or a sacred ritual space, so
it is much harder to imagine sections which can be protected from the cruel
& dull climate of commodity exchange. Would it be possible to
implement-download Bataille's notion of the gift and envision the net as a
space to develop the net-economy as gift (as eg. christmas gifts for
nettimers)?

Bataille questioned how the determination of excess energy circulating in
the biosphere is altered by human activity. He juxtaposed secular economy
with general economy, postulating that the later has less restrictive ways
of channeling or utilizing excess energy. Whereas modern economies are
founded on a pietist moral code which condemns idleness and luxury and
affirms the value of enterprise (THE PACT), general economy is based on the
notion of excessive gift which can only be consumed in a different manner.
The gift enhances a performed consumerism and leads to a process of
self-consciousness, or ritualized enactment of a culture's high point of
exuberance, ecstasy, or intensity (NETTIME). Such awareness of a culture's
accursed share is absent in capitalist economies which channel excessive
energy by means of war.

It is important in this context to note that many pornographers would be
willing to present their works as semi-charitable gifts to Internet
consumers.  In capitalist societies, full membership of the public has
traditionally been tied to the ability to partake in commodity exchange
such as the christmas gift. To refuse to partake is such a system is to
forego the status that comes with citizenship.  In post-capitalist
societies, other types of exchange can secure forms of social cohesion
between individuals. Pornography is made, consumed, exhibited, and
evaluated in the cracks between spaces. Pornography is transferred between
onscreen and offscreen sexual advances, online and offline communication
and performativity.  Pornography will reinvent itself in the suburbs and
garter belts of net spaces and refuse to partake in THE PACT between
government and Internet industries, the watchdogs.

Katrien Jacobs




Katrien Jacobs

Emerson College
Visual and Media Arts
180 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02116

(617) 824 8828




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