This is not porn

English translation of the text published in French in issue 3 of EPECTASE Magazine

Pictures by Miss Pilz, models : Ambros & Héroïs, editing & texts : Herois

How to make anarchist porn? This is, in short, the question that Marie and I asked ourselves during one of our first conversations. How to make porn that is radically free of exploiters and exploited, free of male gaze, free of reification of people, free of the reduction of bodies to organs, of sex to bodies? We imagined a porn movie that is not quite porn, half larp, half film d’auteur, where the sexual encounter is interspersed with the discussions that precede and follow it, with consent, with care, where directors and technicians are off-camera but not out of frame, where the editing is done together and penetrates the image itself, camera on, a kind of porn jam… But before that, we needed to explore: how does it feel to be filmed during a sensu/sexuality session? What is the place of the image, of the photographer? We have not given up on this project, and the experience we are sharing here contributes to laying down, slowly, tenderly, the groundwork that will guide our future eroticism.

This is not porn, one could say of this evening spent making veggie makis, talking about the relationships that bind us, and making – fabricating – sexuality. Three lovers, one behind the camera (the cameras – digital and film), the other two in front of it, pecking or devouring each other with their eyes and lips: a moment of complicity, of exchange, a moment of love and compersion.

This is not porn… Or is it?

His eczema, my scars, our desire.

Our white, thin, muscular bodies, our bodies so normative that I would be ashamed to expose them, in the general accumulation of smooth and reliefless images.

But there are my scars, first, these two red lines on my torso, like a big fuck you addressed by my body to straight guys, to these guys who would have fucked me anyway, even though I’m anarchist, shaved, non-binary.

There’ s also, under my skin, this dull or sharp pain like pools of poison in my fingers, my shoulders, my elbows, this fucking pain that doesn’t exist but keeps me from sleeping, the fibromyalgia about which I ironically say: another box checked on the bingo of discriminations.

And then, on his own body, the body of a barely cis guy, hypersensitive and neuroA, the eczema that colonizes his arms, his face, his back, his chest, his ears, his knees, his shins, his skull. Twenty bucks a week of skin cream to avoid drying out completely, two times a day, three, four. And no box for it on the bingo.

Our sensuality, our desire are built from these bodies, from the situated experiences that they convene. These are bodies that require care, mutual support, attention, and this, well outside of the sexual encounter.

often feel like the appreciation of sex, in queer circles, comes down to kinks, quirks, and fantasies that aspire to not be vanilla – as if “vanilla” sex was all about ten minute missionary sex.

And I have the impression, subjective, personal as only a feeling can be, that even for the anarchists, sex fails to do without power relations – even though it lies at the center of what anarchy is.

I look askance at practices that eroticize power: in truth, I’ll admit it, what turns me on is reciprocity, equality, care.

Holding my partners when they feel bad, grabbing their hand when they fall into anxiety or self-hatred, helping them make medical appointments or making them tea while they talk about their heartaches, all of this is part of the construction of my desire, all of this exists when I kiss them, touch them, admire them in their complexity. In the same way, my desire remembers all the times they washed my dishes to save my spoons, they massaged me until I could sleep, they forgave my dark mood because I was in pain, they smiled tenderly as they listened to me talk about the moments I spent with others.

This is not porn :it’s a window into the intimacy of people who care about each other.


You can find the full set of shots on my OnlyFans @lavouivre or order free film prints (unreleased here ;)) by emailing lavouivre.sw@gmail.com.
follow us on Instagram: @herois_photo and @mirindart.pilz (https://cut-up-hearts.com/)