Organized by three professors – Katrien Jacobs, Laikwan Pang, and James Steintrager – from the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK, this seminar will discuss taste and tastelessness in relation to erotic art and pornography, allowing academic speakers, artists, filmmakers and a wider audience to share ideas about changing media environments.

Hong Kong is an exciting place to project new tendencies in art and pornography. The movie “3d Sex and Zen: Ecstasy Unlimited” has caused multifold reactions in the mass media and social networks. While some are morally opposed to pornography’s mainstreaming, many have taken the opportunity to debate its aesthetic choices and construction of pleasure. Women and men alike praise the movie’s positive effect on Hong Kong entertainment industry, while some complain about a lack of arousing sex scenes and about excessive violence. While this and other movies offer expanded stories of gender and eroticism, they still cannot easily be distributed or canonized as they have to grapple with existing obscenity legislation.

The symposium Taste(less) will invite scholars and artists to discuss pornography tastes as a wide range of sexually explicit media. Sex taste is an integral component of mainstream movies and art works, while pornography itself is making efforts to offer more complex stories and attract wider audiences. We are also witnessing undercurrent markets and cults of feminist pornography and queer pornography that intend to arouse viewers yet question the goals of “male-stream pornography.” Key questions for the debate: What is the social charisma of sexually explicit art and media in Hong Kong? What kind of movies and artworks should be included in cultural-erotic heritage? What are the local reactions to alternative genres such as feminist and queer pornography?

Symposium Participants:

Komuro Hiroyoshi, lead actor of “3d Sex and Zen: Ecstasy Unlimited”
Gerrie Lim, author of Singapore Rebel: The Story of Annabel Chong
Laikwan Pang, CUHK, Cultural and Religious Studies
Katrien Jacobs, CUHK, Cultural and Religious Studies
James Steintrager, CUHK, Cultural and Religious Studies
Verdy Leung, Visiting Lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Film

strokes of sex in art and porn
Opening: 11 June, 2011 (Sat), 2pm – 5pm

Rundown:
2pm-3pm: Roundtable Panel about “Taste” with Katrien Jacobs, Gerrie Lim & Verdy Leung
3pm-3:15pm: Break / Refreshments
3:30pm-4:30pm: Roundtable Panel about “3d Sex and Zen: Ectasy Unlimited’ with Christopher Sun, Laikwan Pang and James Steintrager