BDSM OR ON WHO DOES THE GAZE OF THE IMAGE FALL?


I take para-relationships and pseudo-events which appear or begin as pure-media phenomena, creating the mirage of a relationship, as sincere and serious. This is not to mistake the cynical potential or motivations which often accompany such events, and not to inflect other kinds of relationships with this same vacuous potential. Rather, I am interested in iterative reversals of the gaze of power, refusals of the flesh, and relationships as a form of media. When our awareness of perceptual mediation comes forward, the limits within which we already live become visible.

The one who loves an image who doesn’t love them back loves an image just the same.

I am looking for conscious choices that are still available to be made immediately within the space haunted by power. Just as media literacy allows one to feel less adrift in relationship to media, the relational literacy of BDSM and kink culture can help one ‘read’ institutions and their impacts on the body. Where the a-theatrical theater of BDSM intervenes, who is the interloper or viewer, who is the subject, and who is the author of that image can be forced to flip. Pressing on that fulcrum, BDSM takes bodies, images, and texts as surfaces, on which the pain, pleasure, and limit are made clear. In BDSM the eyes of power leave a mark that can be trace back to whatever is caught wearing and being worn by the mask.