Sexual Healers TV: a post-woke sex worker’s visual manifesto

If abridging racial and gendered slurs has served the ethical repurposing of historically violent language, subverting derogatory colloquialisms by endowing them with the same semantic surplus habitually used to cement class hierarchies can be an equally effective political device. Such was the thinking behind the self-avowed thotscholar’s tentative coinage of the fourth-wave-feminist notion of proheauxism — “derived from the more colloquial pro-hoe. (Spelling altered to reflect difference & refinement.) Black or brown womanists — women and femme, cis or trans — who are pro-sex and/or are sex workers and support sex worker rights. Committed to collective and personal empowerment, not just sexually, but through economic security sans judgment of the means. Radically thotty, and proud of it.” A premise shared by artist Will Fredo and foregrounded by their solo exhibition project titled Sexual Healers TV, on view at Cologne’s Mouches Volantes space until November 7th.

Grammatical language, however, is only the scaffold upon which the suffocating semantics of (Eurocentric) contemporary visual representation can assert hegemonic authority. Alongside the advent of camming, OnlyFans and the proliferation of fourth-wave feminist polemics surrounding the complicated (or, perhaps, promising) cross-pollination of intersectional body politics, sex work and technology, Fredo’s four-channel video installation suggests that discourse and social change are panting, trying to keep up with the digital fury they have, for better or for worse, fallen prey to. Combining sociological research, fiction, humour with an ambiguously ciné-vérité aesthetic, Sexual Healers TV ask: what does, can, and should democratised, dignified sex work look like in a post-woke age of digital capitalism?

How do you tread the line between victimisation and romanticisation when creating art that directly engages with sex work?

There’s a strong history of certain patterns of how we as objects and subjects relate to sex work. We’ve been fed so many specific hegemonic narratives in society and popular culture of sex and sex work that were created by and to serve the middle classes. For instance, in movies like Pretty Woman, the sex worker is often portrayed as someone who pursues this profession because they are coerced by someone else or by their tragic life circumstances that they have to overcome. While this also happens, there are other cases where the sex worker has full agency over their own lives and they do it because they want to. In an attempt to move away from (self) victimisation there are cases where sex work is glossed over such as in Belle du Jour, in turn erasing the challenges that are experienced by many or most sex workers. When working on this specific topic, from the moment I went into the audition, to conducting the interviews, performing and talking about Sexual Healers TV, I found it very easy to look at my experience through these two lenses and ignore nuance. So the key is to be hyper aware of where I stand, from which position I speak and all the details that exist within all of these dynamics. 

In a piece you’ve written about Sexual Healers TV, you’ve noted that there are some blindspots that non-sex workers inherently possess. Can you elaborate on what these blindspots are and why they exist?

Some people may not see me as a sex worker because I have only done a couple of adult videos one of which I paid another performer a fee. The other adult video I made was with a Venezuelan OnlyFans performer and I have been selling that video to raise funds to support Black causes. I adhere to @thotscholar’s definition of proheauxism which rejects whore hierarchies. Nonetheless, I respect sex workers who do not share my privileges including an EU passport, ethnic ambiguity, and others I may not be aware of at this point in time. Therefore, there is a whole set of experiences and points of view that I don’t possess, that someone who has been in the industry for years does. For example, I wasn’t aware that adult movie performers who also work as escorts can in theory raise their profiles depending on which films they feature in. What is interesting in intersecting professional lines are the epistemologies that it creates. What is crucial in my work and, really, this is the focal point in my practice: to offer a critical look at the status quo through contemporary art. What I am essentially doing is offering a Marxist critique of late capitalism from the lens of Black trans body politics through visual digital culture. For instance, Black trans women such as Diamond Stylz have been analysing representation politics for years and have asserted that representation without structural change is a smoke screen. Though Black trans politics also criticise Marxism itself via accountability, positionality and intersectionality. From this line of criticality, I am proposing that accepting poor payment for an adult movie or an exhibition participation or a written review because of the perceived prestige of working with established brand names is an aspect of late capitalism that erases an intersection of problematics such as class privilege and others and therefore I am proposing that the performers I work with also get royalties.

In this case Erik receives 30% of what I make from renting the video we shot, and that’s why there’s a €5 entry fee to my exhibition at Mouches Volantes. Often people don’t claim certain rights because they’re not aware they have them, something which fits perfectly into the paradigm of capitalism. What I’m also proposing is that we share the control over the means of production in the creative industries and share the accumulation of capital. So you have an artist who makes beautiful portraits of marginalised people and what I’m proposing is that the marginalised people also get a share of the capital that is created along the years through the sale and resale of that work, something that currently is not commonplace though there have been discussions with regards to auction sales and whether artists should get a cut from that too. Black trans body politics immediately includes the marginalised bodies into the discussion, not just the artist.

For those who may not have read Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism, can you summarise how the camera is used as a colonial tool and how this relates to the racialised aspects of sexuality?

The history of colonialism is the history of technology. In the book Azoulay speaks about the colonial history of the camera—for instance, it was used to document the savage other, and makes the case for the camera’s inherent nature as an agent with an imperial condition. She explains that the camera’s shutter in a split second of operation creates three dividing lines. In time between a before and after; in space between who is in front of the camera and who is behind it; and in the body politic between those who possess and operate the device and appropriate and accumulate their product and those whose labor is extracted. She also mentions the violence that can take place around that action and is implicated in it such as families being separated in slavery times and ICE times just to give you some examples.

It’s important to keep colonial history in mind, because otherwise it reaffirms itself constantly. I have talked to artists from the Global South who also identify this practice in their own countries when city people go to the villages to photograph the exotic other, the less cosmopolitan. So the question for me as an artist and individual is how do I recreate these dynamics today in my own practice and how can I undo that. My practice is about how technology and by extension colonialism is experienced in the contemporary world, and how art can engage with that and disentangle it.

In relation to the racialised body, we have bilatinmen.com—a company based in the USA, selling adult, racialised content, marketed to white people. In itself, and as we explore in the interview with Leo Galileo, objectification is totally acceptable when there is full agency and transparency. The performers who shoot for them are in control of their decisions as adults but this type of sex outsourcing where a company that could well shoot ‘Latin porn’ in LA, goes to Colombia to avoid regulations and pay considerably less, follows a colonial path and that is what I am identifying, regardless of whether I decide to shoot with them or not. Colonialism has become ingrained in our culture and our generation is finally questioning every aspect of it, not only what pertains to strict geo-political representation. 

You’ve acknowledged that Black trans body politics has been able to challenge assumptions towards sexuality, in part due to operating in a post-woke era. What, to you, qualifies as “post-woke” in a problematic way?

Black trans politics have heralded the post-woke era, i.e., without Black trans politics we’d still be stuck in representation politics where the structural is rather left unexplored which goes again only to serve the groups of people that have the chance to have a seat at the table. Black trans body politics demands structural change and not only cosmetic and not only with regards to sexuality but all paths of life; and that includes accountability. A crucial aspect we explore in Sexual Healers TV is workers’ rights whether in the sex industry, creative industry, or else because no industry is really isolated and definitely the creative industry is one of the most openly canibalistic ones.

To what extent does technology contribute to the democratisation and recognition of sex work in the digitised society?

The iPhone 4 which brought the selfie camera to the market really changed the way we engage with our self image and how we monetise and capitalise on the images of ourselves. Specifically, it made people aware of the erotic capital that we all have and it normalised the exploration of that capital. An obvious example of that would be Kim Kardashian. 

Technology, especially apps such as Instagram, OnlyFans and all its rivals have normalized sex work. Often Instagramers who want to offer paid options to their followers do it via OnlyFans and some of those options are of sexual nature. So now we have apps where some of its users offer a yoga class and others an adult performance. 

The possibilities and perils of using new technologies in sex work are at the core of the debate. To what extent do new technologies interfere with progress when it comes to sex work, both in terms of rights and social destigmatisation?

Technology is a tool and as such it can be developed, bought and used for myriad purposes. When it comes to the latest technology or update it’s also attached to purchase power, class and privilege. Sex work often happens at the fringes of society meaning that many sex workers don’t have the monetary capacity to catch up with certain technological innovation and are left out of the game. 

So although technology can offer new possibilities to sex workers and people in general not all sex workers can make use of it and that’s something I address in the visual essay I did with Erik when I mention that for you to leak or release a sex tape and actually profit from it and create a career out of it you need to come from a family with financial means like with Paris Hilton. There’s many other examples too. One that Mandhla, the first artist I invited to create a work for Sexual Healers TV and did a brilliant performance at our launch in Cologne, mentioned is the simple fact that OnlyFans only accepts credit card payments which is out of limits for many sex workers as well as their clients who don’t possess traditional bank accounts. It’s also worth mentioning that in highly surveilled societies no one really has full control over their images and when your livelihood depends on selling moving images that can easily be pirated and reproduced you can be at a loss. However, I think the more personal relationship that OnlyFans performers have with their customers creates a circle where ripping the videos is not a common thing, unlike more traditional adult sites where there is no sense of responsibility towards the performers and production houses.

There’s also the case when sex work is further stigmatizied in highly digitised societies such as in Scandinavia or France where there’s neo-abolotionist laws in place that claim to protect sex workers but in the end are only damagind them by penalising their clients. And of course social media can also be used to amplify shaming narratives. 

Andrea Dworkin and other feminist theorists, have referred to porn (and heterosexual sex) as inherently violent. Sex work has historically been an (intersectional) feminist issue. How do you, as men putting together this, frame and observe your input in the debate? On a societal level, how do you view the role of cis men in the debate?

I’m a proheaux womanist so it’s really important to mention @thotscholar’s definition of Proheauxism I chose to display in the exhibition:

2. A womanist who rejects antiheaux sentiments as well as respectability, racial capitalism, and whore hierarchies.  Rejects misogynoir and transmisogynoir–all forms of misogyny, period. Does not accept nor engage in active or passive transphobia, homophobia, colorism, xenophobia, classism,  or anti Blackness.  Doesn’t juxtapose the erotic and pornography, and recognizes that non-exploitative pleasure comes in varied forms, is not always sex-centered, and is paramount to the human experience. Against all forms of erasure and systemic oppression. Recognizes that solidarity is impossible without acknowledging difference and rejects the urge to homogenize experiences under the guise of inclusivity. 

What I also love about this definition #2 of the term is that it is an update from the 2016 version. And it’s this update in definition that is also conceptually crucial in this whole project, it changes because things change. That’s why it’s displayed as an oversized wrinkled draft – it’s something that it’s not permanent and that is constantly evolving like technology. That’s why I turned Sexual Healers TV into an ongoing project where I commission more artists to create work that deals with all these thematics and more. That’s why Sexual Healers TV is an open space that welcomes dissident points of view and experimentation with all its risks and mistakes because that’s the only way we can create a new world.  

One of the greatest paradoxes of contemporary societies is that they are highly reactionary while being obsessed with tech innovation. We live in a world where people queue overnight for the latest digital gadget while Chile only just voted to update a constitution drafted by a dictator 40 years ago. Sexual Healers TV exists to bridge this gap, between technological advancement and social change, via contemporary art and body politics. I want to skip a whole generation. 

The idea of porn as inherently violent feeds into respectability politics which functions to gain acceptance from the white supremacist capitalist classicist patriarchy. What I’m proposing is more complex. Contemporary art can really add to this discussion by trialing more horizontal structures in image creation, image rights and capital accumulation. 

I can only speak for myself, and each person in Sexual Healers TV speaks for themselves that’s why I feature long interviews with the people I worked with. Sexual Healers TV started with three gay-male-passing people and the launch featured a transfeminine gender nonconforming artist. The plan is to expand the channel with further perspectives and subjectivities. I’m not interested in identity politics per se that’s why I also feature a quote by John Berger in the exhibition, next to a quote by a cis Black woman.

I am a non-binary male-passing artist and I’m making this highly politicised anti-capitalist proheaux womanist work and writing these words because I’m a proheaux womanist. Anyone can be a proheaux womanist. Though it is also not a coincidence that bodies like mine who are aware of their intersection of identities, marginalizations and privileges enter critical discourse to offer new readings of capitalist societies, and offer new proposals on how to challenge and dismantle the status quo that is kept in place to only serve the powerful. 

Interviews are an integral part of my artistic practice, to me they function as a form of collective therapy and share economy. As I printed on the PVC curtain that leads to the adult video SHARE THE BLAME, SHARE THE SHAME, SHARE THE PAIN, SHARE THE GAIN. 

Sexual Healers TV by Will Fredo runs through to 7 November 2020 at Mouches Volantes.