Joined by sex worker and artist Misha Mayfair and Britain’s leading obscenity lawyer Myles Jackman, Urrutia presents the talk: Yes, but is it porn? In the outer reaches of sex: fetish and obscenity.

Read the Run-Riot Interview with Lidia Ravviso, Artistic Director, UNCENSORED Festival.

Since February 2019, it is legal to watch, possess and distribute images of consensual sex acts between adults that, until now, were illegal to view (but not necessarily to perform). These so-called “extreme porn”, included fisting, facesitting, female ejaculation and activities that might leave marks or harm that is not transitory. From April 2019, however, all adults in the UK wishing to watch porn online will have to give their personal details to a governmental database under the Age Verification Act. One step forward on one side is ten steps backward on the other side. So were are we? And why asks Itziar and her guests at this screening and round table, is female or queer produced/performed porn disproportionately discriminated in legislation? What’s behind this compulsory “coming out” expected of porn users? What is extreme porn? What is obscene? And why does it victimize female and queer subjects, while demonizing porn users, largely (and falsely) characterized as male? Sex on the outer reaches can be a radical act, a threat to ordinary life and the status quo. In this time of post-truth and post-politics, sexuality is again a danger to a decaying sense of a society where new forms of community emerge but surveillance and data mining rule our lives.

The talk will also involve two experts in pornography and censorship to discuss the recent and forthcoming changes in the UK legislation.

ITZIAR BILBAO URRUTIA

Itziar Bilbao Urrutia is an artist, pornographer, and activist based in London. She is the creator of ‘The Urban Chick Supremacy Cell’, a dystopian femdom fetish porn project inspired by Valerie Solanas’ ‘SCUM Manifesto’, Andrea Dworkin and Ulrike Meinhof. Her work operates outside the magic circle of contemporary art and goes straight into the adult consumer. As a radical feminist who is also a porn performer and producer, her practice draws its ideas from these apparently irreconcilable views of women’s bodily autonomy. Itziar also writes about the history and censorship of female sexuality.

MISHA MAYFAIR

Misha Mayfair is a sex worker and artist involved in porn, art, and activism. Whilst still a student, she started a union for student sex workers at Goldsmiths since they were receiving little support or recognition. She has organized art shows for and by sex workers and has co-hosted the film festival ‘Alien Sex Tapes’ in the last porn cinema of Paris, exhibiting “taboo” porn and video art that is otherwise too risqué to screen. She tries to use her voice to speak out about sex work issues with the aim of humanizing the “bad women”. Her own art practice deals with the psychology/psyche and physical process of being a “bad woman”.

MYLES JACKMAN

Myles Jackman is Britain’s leading obscenity lawyer. Myles has dedicated his career to challenging the legal framework by which sexual morality is constrained through activism, litigation and advocacy, campaigning for the recognition and rights of the BDSM, LGBTQ, Adult-Industry and Sex-Work communities, and lobbying for privacy and freedom of sexual expression for all consenting adults.