ANJA PUNTARI
xxx

Text by  
Katia Anguelova

Opening on the 22nd of November 2007, 7 pm.
thru to the 31st of January 2008

Is Sex a private matter?
Or is it more a relational network, a block of political devices (institutional, technical, performative) used for production and control of our subjectivity?
How and in what conditions does Sex emerge in the field of representation?
During the 80’s, an American porn actress Annie Sprinkle used the term “post-pornography”, for the first time, to introduce her performance “The Public Cervix Announcement”. During this performance the spectators could explore with the use of a mirror inside her vagina. With her performance a new form of representation of sex and sexuality took place.
Pornography is the main theme of Anja Puntari’s new work, but the artist develops this argument with an opposite point of view.
In her video named xxx, Anja Puntari started her research by reflecting on the keyword  “xxx”, that is often used for searching and downloading porn files on the internet.
The result is a sequence of frames of female eyes shown in slow motion. The video stills are taken from porn movies, which are classified under the genre named Gonzo. Gonzo is a technique used to reduce the space between the spectators and the actors, in which the camera operator or the director takes part in the action. Gonzo is also a way of making movies that is low-cost and adaptable for professional and non-professional actors.
In the postproduction process Anja Puntari highlights the feminine eyes and transforms the visual codes of pornography.  
It is interesting to see how pornography is reduced to just one long stare, a series of gazes. These eyes create a mystery play that we have already seen in cinema and heard of in literature. In Anja Puntari’s artistic research the porn scenes, the core of this work, change statute; by using the terminology of Linda Williams, we can say that from the position of ob/scene in pornography the actresses become on/scene. By focusing on their stare, the artist gives a new potentiality to the image and the use of slow motion in the sequence makes the work introspective.
Interpreting our world is not sufficient. The question should be how to produce singularity, how to make sense in this chaos of objects and images that surrounds us. Today artists tend to start from the existent, with the intention to change it and find new significances for it.
By editing in postproduction, Anja Puntari creates a video that acquires an enigmatic character. These eyes without bodies take their time in rejoining to the flesh and the sperm. Their intimacy and mystery remains intact, elsewhere.
 
Katia Anguelova
 
Translated by Aria Spinelli
 

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