Since I am now living in a rather quiet environment, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a monthly writing podcast. It would be a roundtable with creatives (writers/poets/thinkers/artists/performers/ etc.) on representing the erotic. The aim of the podcast is to examine and deconstruct the subject, its conventions, psychological, social, political aspects, etc.
This is not a podcast on how to write erotica, how to get published, or how to sell. It’s goal is to really dig into and explore the underlying issues that surround the creation of explicit material in our times. The aim is to create a library of discussions that serve as inspiration to creatives. I want to underscore that this is absolutely non-commercial. So if you are looking for a way to promote your latest book, this is not the podcast for you.
Here are a list of the kind of themes we’d like to explore:
- The Erotics of Time – what happens to the perception of time in erotic space?
- Erotic Alterity – what happens to our concepts of The Other in eroticism?
- What happens to power in erotic space?
- Ungendering Eroticism: Do concepts of gender change under the influence of the erotic?
- Desire and Satiation: What do we really desire? Does the concept of satedness exist in the erotic world? Are they also erotic?
- Queer Eroticism: Is all eroticism really Queer? (Please use the definition of Queer here)
- Bataille said there is no eroticism without transgression: What constitutes transgression to you?
- Susan Sontag believed that an important part of representing the erotic required an element of the impossible. Do you agree? How to you attempt to describe the impossible?
I’m looking for participants. Here are the criteria:
- English need not be your first language, but you must be able to speak it fairly well. That being said, we like accents of all sorts.
- You don’t need to be a creative who focuses solely or mostly on erotic content, but it needs to play a significant part in your work.
- You do not have to be published or performed all over the place, but your some work needs to be publicly available.
- You need to have thought about this subject deeply. Deep enough to have bothered to search out what other thinkers have to say about the subject.
- You need to be reasonably sure you can be available at the time closest to you in the grid below.
- You need to have skype and 1 hour of fairly uninterrupted time.
So, what do YOU get out of participating in this? Well, to be blunt, nothing other than the opportunity to stretch your mind a little with other people who also enjoy that kind of thing. If that holds no particular value for you, then yup… not the podcast for you.
The goal is to record the program on the 1st Monday of each month. So the first skype meet up would be February 4, 2013 at 11PM EST in the US and 4AM February 5, GMT.
| Location | Local time | Time zone | UTC offset |
|---|---|---|---|
| London (United Kingdom – England) | Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 4:00:00 AM | GMT | UTC |
| New York (U.S.A. – New York) | Monday, February 4, 2013 at 11:00:00 PM | EST | UTC-5 hours |
| Denver (U.S.A. – Colorado) | Monday, February 4, 2013 at 9:00:00 PM | MST | UTC-7 hours |
| Los Angeles (U.S.A. – California) | Monday, February 4, 2013 at 8:00:00 PM | PST | UTC-8 hours |
| Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) | Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 11:00:00 AM | ICT | UTC+7 hours |
| Melbourne (Australia – Victoria) | Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 3:00:00 PM | EDT | UTC+11 hours |
| Johannesburg (South Africa) | Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 6:00:00 AM | SAST | UTC+2 hours |
| Mumbai (India – Maharashtra) | Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 9:30:00 AM | IST | UTC+5:30 hours |
| Corresponding UTC (GMT) | Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 04:00:00 |
GMT. See the grid below to work out if this is a feasible time for you
Is this one theme per podcast, then?
Yes. I doubt it would be possible to do more, and get four or five people to weigh in on the subject to any depth in an hour
Also, are you looking for the same roundtable of people to cover all of the listed topics? Or will it be permissible to participate in some topics and not others?
It would!
Heya! My girlfriend sent me to you and I would love to be part of this project. My creative work – largely performance art and writing, but occasionally other things – deal with liminality, particularly the intersections of being a female queer migrant minority. Eroticism plays a huge part in my work – mostly in deconstructing *how* I am eroticized or de-eroticised, how race/gender/sexuality/nationality/appearance all affect each other, how the definition of “sexy” or its worth really differs across places. I have also been a passionate supporter of SlutWalk and organised last year’s SlutWalk in Brisbane, Australia (I am in the Bay Area now).
Check me out at http://creatrixtiara.com or http://notyourexrotic.tumblr.com 🙂
Does this sort of time work for you, Tiara? And could you email me your skype addy at remittancegirl@gmail.com
I really want to hear these. Very seriously want.
This is a really awesome idea. I would love to participate, and could be available at the time slot indicated. The idea you’ve listed that I’m most excited about is Bataille. I’ll never forget my experience of reading The Story of the Eye — I really felt the sense of transgression. For a long time I feared being destroyed by eroticism (and, melodramatic as that sounds, it was a real fear), because it seemed to me that the erotic required constant escalation (in order to maintain the sense of transgression). Reading Bataille actually helped me, because I knew I couldn’t go as far as his characters do. It put a bound on the sense of a limitless need to transgress that I previously had.
Anyway, I would love to discuss that with you and others, but would also be happy to talk about something else if you’d prefer. I’d also like to express my general interest in the entire project as a potential listener.
Annabeth, could you email me? Perhaps we could do a session on that sense of impending ‘destruction’ you mentioned. I think it is common and, for some people, part of the lure.