Vex Ashley is one of the leading creators of avant-garde porn, making films that actively defy the stereotypes attached to female-directed adult movies (think: cuddling, soft lighting, cheesy music). She releases her arresting works through her independent production company Four Chambers, founded in 2010. Ashley is the public face of the business but shares her workload with a business partner who shuns the spotlight but is still wholly present in the artistic process. Ashley creates adult films on the basis that porn is valuable creative work in its own right — not just something to be consumed and forgotten about directly afterwards — and uses the medium to intelligently interrogate our relationship with technology, the human body, gender, and sex itself.
Even the most ardent cinephile is accepting of the terrible filmic standards in porn — whether it’s awkward camera angles on PornHub, or the shaky frames of an amateur flick — but Ashley’s work proves that a better porn is not just possible, but also streamable at the click of a button. Contrary to male-focussed porn, Ashely’s wandering camera constantly shifts its focus, drawing the viewer into a holistic erotic experience. In her work, you have the space to appreciate the details — finger prints, sweat drops, goosebumps — rather than doggedly pursue an end goal. That’s not to say that there’s anything “softcore” about Ashley’s films, no-one ever said that an eye for aesthetics and a proclivity towards kink were mutually exclusive.
Intrigued to discover more about her rarified practice, we sat down with Ashley to learn more about how she became involved in the adult entertainment industry, her singular approach to her medium, and the stigma that still afflicts porn performers.
First things first: why porn?
Sex is a really important and interesting facet of our life and, unlike every other aspect of our experiences as human beings, it’s something that hasn’t been investigated really thoroughly or openly. I’m interested in how sex intersects with other aspects of our lives. Because all of our films are available online, I was interested in playing with the equipment, the technology available to us, and the idea that we do everything digitally now. But despite our exploration of these digital concepts, it all ties into timeless, overarching concepts of bodies, women’s identities, and things like mythology, which underpin our society throughout time. I like the idea of trying to combine all of these ideas to see what that can do and say within the medium of an explicit, graphic, and totally sexual porn film.
How did you break into the industry?
I started doing some softcore, alternative online modelling and was introduced to webcamming. Through these experiences, I realised that there was a whole community of people making porn independently of any big studio. However, when I looked into it, I was surprised that there wasn’t more experimentation going on. So, I started making pornographic films as an experiment, with a partner of mine, to see if I could put the same creative focus into pornographic material as I had been with my artwork [as a Fine Art student]. I began by making what were basically music videos — featuring three or four minutes of porn — and posting them online. The response was really incredible, so I decided to raise some money to pay performers and improve our equipment. It took off way more than I ever expected, to the point where it’s been my full-time job for three or four years.
What is “good porn”?
I don’t think there’s good porn and bad porn. There’s no measure of what’s universally ethical or feminist, it’s all inherently subjective. It’s important for me to not come from a perspective of shaming. Porn is about pleasure and it shouldn’t become sanitised or safe. However, porn holds a mirror to our society, and our society is racist, sexist and transphobic, among other things. We need to deconstruct the problematic shit in porn so that we can we can deconstruct the problematic shit in society. So, we need to see a much more varied canon of pornography, with new alternative perspectives. Porn should be as varied and creative as sex is, and we’ve only scratched the surface of the filmic potential of sex.
"Bearing the responsibility of the pending UK age verification law is not something that I’m prepared for; I’d rather look for ways to subvert it"
How do you feel about the PornHub monopoly?
We see it in every industry. For example, companies like Spotify and Apple Music have a big monopoly in the music industry. They decide the way that people get paid, as well as who gets promoted and who doesn’t get promoted. They’ve changed the face of the industry and the same thing is happening in porn. In lots of ways porn is more amateur and independent now than it’s ever been. The prevalence of the tube sites means that you have to stand out: that you have to do something different, to find a niche. In some ways it’s kind of beneficial but it can also be really difficult to do things differently as a small, independent producer, and to find avenues that don’t pay lip service to big-business capitalism. It’s very hard to get your work out there: there are so many obstacles in your way and if you’re not playing the game it means that you’re at an extra disadvantage.
How do you make money?
There are avenues out there which are available for alternative porn, but they involve signing up to clip sites that are like the Etsy of porn. The commission that they take is often 40 to 50 percent of the price of the video, which in any other industry would be considered daylight robbery. But we were interested in seeing if we could put our work with sex next to other creative work. When we started to think seriously about Four Chambers — maybe three or four years ago — we discovered a site called Patreon which is an ongoing community fundraising site, a bit like Crowdfunder. Unfortunately, even though our presence was well-supported on the platform, Patreon was bought by new investors who wanted to eradicate the creatives that they deemed “undesirable”, and that included Four Chambers. Since then, we’ve been trying to start again from scratch, finding new avenues to make space and get funding.
"Porn should be as varied and creative as sex is, and we’ve only scratched the surface of the filmic potential of sex"
What would it mean for you if the UK government’s plans to introduce age verification for online porn got approved?
Nobody knows how the age verification law might impact the industry because there’s no information out there — it’s all just word of mouth and hearsay. It basically seems to mean that I’m going to have to pay money for every person who wants to visit my site in order to age-verify them. Handily for Mind Geek [the parent company of PornHub], they’ve produced the software that I will require as an independent producer so that I can age-verify my visitors. It allows them to profit off the moral panic about porn. If this legislation is passed, I would potentially be responsible for the details of everyone visiting my site. I don’t feel comfortable with that. I as a visitor wouldn’t feel comfortable with that either — it’s an invasion of people’s privacy. We might just take our whole sight offline for anyone who tries to access it from the UK. Bearing the responsibility of that is not something that I’m prepared for; I’d rather look for ways to subvert it.
Why is the porn industry still taboo?
Sex, masturbation and watching porn have become part of the conversation. But people don’t think about how the video they are watching got there, about how the people further down the food chain were treated in the making of it, or the kind of things it has the potential to say. They think that porn is disposable and worthless, so, by extension, they think that the people who perform in it are disposable and worthless too. There’s a stigma in the sense that it’s hard to be a porn performer and then leave the industry and go on to do something else. There’s still a risk involved.
You can support Four Chambers via their website, which can be found here.