In the present, pornography is pedagogical and produces the sexuality it represents. Patriarchal and binary biological and neurological narratives of dominant/active males, coy/passive females, and pathologized queer behaviour greet us on the home pages of popular porn websites, together with colonial narratives of the exoticised and fetishised other.

In the future, sexual experience is downloadable, hackable, and uploaded via neurological implants that stimulate your sensory nerves and pleasure centres directly. ‘Speculative Sex’ presents work by Shu Lea Cheang and Eric Pussyboy using science fiction narratives as a medium to re-present bodies and sex.

Event and screening schedule:
I.K.U. – Shu Lea Cheang, 73mins
Neurosex Pornoia 1 – Eric Pussyboy and Abigail Gnash, 10mins
Neurosex Pornoia 2 Teaser with Ze Royale – Eric Pussyboy and Abigail Gnash, 3mins

The screenings will be followed by a short talk by Eric Pussyboy about Neurosex Pornoia, his research on perspectives on gendered neurological research, and a Q&A.

Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954, Taiwan) is an artist working across film, video, installation and web spaces. Her practice combines artistic concerns with hot-button social issues, defined by her peripatetic and information-era existence. She has been a member of the alternative media collective Paper Tiger Television since 1982, and in 2021 cofounded Kingdom of Piracy, an online work space promoting free sharing of digital content and ideas as an artform. She has presented projects at Sundance Film Festival (2007); the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (2002); the Whitney Biennial (1995); and the Berlin Film Festival (1994)

Eric Pussyboy (b. Spain) is an artist and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. In a productive tension with institutionalised learning, he completed a BA in Social Sciences and European Ethnology at the Humboldt-University with a thesis on a queer non-commercial film festival in Berlin, and is completing a Masters in Gender Studies at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science. He is interested in Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives on Science and Medicine, focusing on neuroscientific approaches to trans people. He started Neurosex Pornoia (2013) together with Abigail Gnash as a DIY sci-fi queerfeminst postporn project.

Abigail Gnash (b. USA) is a curator, musician and filmmaker living and working in Berlin, who works within the realms of queer postporn. Her film Party Favours (2016) has been shown at multiple film festivals in Berlin, London and Rome, alongside smaller screenings in Germany, France and Italy. She has been collaborating with Eric Pussyboy on the Neurosex Project since its inception in 2013.