Putting Out

Sophia Al Maria, Darja Bajagić, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Hal Fischer, Juliana Huxtable, Pierre Klossowski, Deana Lawson, Leigh Ledare, Reba Maybury, Frida Orupabo, Elle Perez, Ser Serpas, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Amalia Ulman, Leilah Weinraub, Nil Yalter

Curated by Reba Maybury and Taylor Trabulus

Between 1760 and 1840 the Industrial Revolution put us in our place. In fact, it literally put us in queues, in boxes, on conveyor belts, up chimneys, living on the streets or in suburbia – firmly placing the worker into a machinated system built with the sole intention of creating profit for those born into wealth.

Since then, the class system has increasingly exploded. It has become immovable and overwrought with complexities. The one thing we all share because it made us - sex - is divided based on what monetary and emotional jobs we perform. Labour leaves one too exhausted to access pleasure or how it can be readily experienced. We are on a timer and carnal knowledge can’t be put into numbers. Sex was once only discussable in regards to familial reproduction thanks to puritanical overlords and is still rarely spoken about in terms of sublime exploration. So, religion thrived on the free market. Now in 2018, capitalism has overtaken religion, creating society’s manic need for numerological ‘security’. The anxiety for money denies us the time to indulge in the potential of one another's skins.

The cosmopolitan world is now on one long, hysterical LSD come down from this inhumanely, unsensual reality. Instead of quantities of people now being the hands and eyes of factories with dreams of being rewarded in heaven (thanks to giving this work to marginalised people overseas) the creative class now spends its days doing fake jobs with atheist beliefs. Creative directors, art directors, working in media, public relations, editors, influencers, models, brand ambassadors, advertisers, labourers of Photoshop. These jobs do not save lives or educate truths and they never conclude in physically touching other people. The internet lets eyes burn and nerve endings stagnate into

meagre orgasms. But - lifestyle creates an illusion of culture.

Belief that you are not repressed does not refuse one’s repression. Because there are invisible people doing the work for you, sex and labour are intertwined more than ever. You watch them on a screen and you meet them on websites or in hotels. You insert plastic made by barely paid workers into your body. Now you have to be able to buy anything or fuck everything. But what does the pleasure of sexual behavior look like when it is monetized away from our salacious stereotypes? This action is often solidified into a dated taboo outside of the place it is performed. There is no social progression without discomfort.

Klossowski proposed that our true energy - our ultimate energy - our DESIRE - has traversed from the erotic into the capitalistic. He wanted us to be rewarded with the human qualities of sensation, emotion and pleasure - things we inherently own instead of numbers. A spell of identification and categorisation distracts from the potential focus on euphoric freedom. This drive is something which we all have, but where has this misguided society left our sexual autonomy?

The 1960s and the subsequent historicizing of it professed that a ‘sexual revolution’ had occurred, however, the real revolution would be to pierce prohibition, destroy denial and usurp bio-power. Without this we are not free and we will carry on using our unfulfilled knowledge of pleasure in limited constructions. Our primal urges are there to be commodified and we don’t know any different, often accepting and handing over our credit card details.

- Reba Maybury