CURRENT EXHIBITION
Christina McPhee
recent work
Seismic Memory: Carrizo-Parkfield Diaries
May 12 - June 8

Gallery hours : Wednesday - Saturday 12pm-5pm, or by appointment by calling (415) 756-8890. Bar opens at 5pm Thursday-Saturday.


pictured (right), : "Aftershock Eventcloud" (detail), 2005; Christina McPhee.

Thursday May 19th
2005 Rx Lecture Series with
MARK DERY

The Sexual Grotesque: Pomosexualities and Robopathologies on the Web


Posthuman relationships with the anatomically accurate androids called RealDolls, extreme bukkake orgies, ultra-violent Japanese hentai cartoons: Depending on your perspective, the Web is a libidinous interzone---a torture garden of unearthly delights---or a sinkhole of depravity. What are we to make of the runaway proliferation of fetishism, in the Web age? (Tentacle rape, anyone? Decapitation fantasies? Amputee worship?) Is fetishism becoming the default modality of our post, post, postmodern sexuality? If so, is it transgressive or repressive---one more example of the iron cage of techno-industrial rationale constricting our desires, or an inspiring example of subcultural sensibilities rebelling against normative notions of sexuality? As well, what are we to make of the Web-enabled "democratization of exploitation": the niche-marketing of nonstandard body types that, ironically, realizes the feminist dream of dethroning normative notions of beauty by peddling the flesh of the morbidly obese and the mind-crushingly ugly. Does this stuff subvert the Beauty Myth? Or is it simply extending its exploitative logic to the far margins of society? "Sex organs sprout everywhere," wrote William S. Burroughs, in Naked Lunch. Even as the self-appointed morals czars of the Bush administration try to childproof the Web, exotic new toadstools spring up in its danker corners. In The Sexual Grotesque, I'll examine the Newtonian physics of our culture---the equal and opposite reactions of official culture and the Web's sexual underworld.

7:00pm doors / 8:00pm lecture
$10 / $5 with student ID
Seating is Limited