SLOW SEX SYMPOSIA
Queer exit-strategies from capitalist economies of attraction and performance

12:00pm to 4:00pm
The Center for Sex and Culture
1349 Mission Street, 
San Francisco, CA 94110  

Presented by THEOFFCENTER in collaboration with Center for Sex and Culture’s Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence and under rigorous curatorial direction by Los Angeles based London scholar and practicing performance maker Doran George, Slow Sex includes two facilitated discussions about desire.

Over the course of a day, events will encourage the symposium audience to make a connection between their own desires and performance that is influenced by alternative participatory sexual-practice.

Panel 1: 12:00-1:45 pm

PERFORMING CRITICAL DESIRE (Jim Self, Tessa Wills, Sara Kraft, Mica Sigourney, Dia Dear, Rafa Esperza, Nick and JMY, Taisha Paggett)

The second panel “performing critical desire,“ brings together the artists that have presented in the 2012 festival “This Is What I Want,“ to discuss how their work does or doesn’t connect with the legacy of alternative sexual practice. Contributors will discuss how their critique of  dominant models of desire connects to their identity, lifestyle or artistic perspective, and how the festival theme provided them with a context to create new work or restage and bring a particular lens to an existing work. They will also reflect upon the influences on queer perspectives in their work more generally, and take questions that arise for the audience.

Panel 2: 2:15-4:00 pm

PRACTICING RADICAL PLEASURE (Carol Queen, Xandra Ibarra, Dossie Easton, Joseph Kramer)

The first panel “practicing radical pleasure,” facilitated by Carol Queen of the Center for Sex and Culture, focuses on the alternative sexual practice movement to structure desire in a way that resists conventional models of attraction and play. With its richly diverse cultural make-up, and distinct history of sex and gender movements, San Francisco has historically been home to one of the strongest radical pleasure communities in the world. Joseph Kramer, Dossie Easton and Xandra Ibarra will present their respective work in the development of lifestyles and the synthesis of identities that have been part of the Bay Area milieu. Each of the panelists has either influenced or been directly involved in the world of performance, and San Francisco boasts a unique relationship between experimental sexual practice and art.