Iza Pavlina
Rule 34

Exhibition
19 April – 12 May 2017
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of U30+ production programme for supporting young artists

Online pornography has profoundly changed the access of younger generations to sexual content. Online, everything is easily accessible; everything is explicit, categorized to meet any preference and / or perversion; and the explosion of amateur pornography has turned the representation of the sexual sphere into something that potentially involves everybody.

In the recent past visual artist Iza Pavlina began to research peculiar sexual fetishes and filmed staged situations using her own body as a medium to enact them. However, the materials she generated differ from typical pornographic materials in that there is an absolute lack of explicit content. The artist decided instead to place the object of the fetish itself in the very centre of the attention. Then she uploaded her materials on a popular porn website and passively monitored responses and comments from online audience members. This initial experiment encouraged her to carry on her scrutiny of these kinds of practices, communication forms and relationships, this time focusing more on the development of her online identity and the way her alter ego engages and interacts with its audience.

The project Rule 34, on display at Aksioma Project Space, is the result of this further investigation. For this exhibition new video and photographic materials illustrating various specific sexual fetishes, such as Exophilia (attraction to non-human life-forms), Plushophilia (attraction to stuffed animals), Agalmatophilia (attraction to statues and dolls), Coulrophilia (attraction to clowns and jesters) and so on, were produced and submitted on a regular basis to all major pornographic media and social networking sites. This became the “habitat” in which the artist’s online persona could exist, live and perform. Her engagement with the audience’s responses, private messages and comments were all but passive. Iza in fact established a direct dialogue with her fans, encouraging them to trade her original digital artwork and drawings for a “Cum Tribute” or any other kind of creative feedback.

Everyday conversations, comments, private messages and exchanged items were regularly documented and then accurately formatted to become part of a multimedia installation. This specific content is made available to the gallery’s audience through a number of Wi-Fi routers, each of which hosts a set of reactions to a specific fetish. These devices, installed next to the artist’s staged paraphilia videos, are disconnected from the internet and broadcast their content only locally, so in order to access a specific collection, visitors have to connect to the proper network through a personal device, being it a smart-phone, tablet or laptop. [1] They can also access the artist’s profiles directly on xHamster, Pornhub and XVideos by scanning QRcodes the artist holds in her hands in the exhibited framed self-portrait drawings. If they decide to do so they will have the opportunity to explore Rule 34 even deeper and actively engage with the project.

[1] This exhibition format, called OFFLINE ART, was initially developed by German artist Aram Bartholl