Pleasure Politics: Dido by Carlos Salazar
http://vimeo.com/130124442
Carlos Salazar’s Pleasure Politics: Dido makes up part of a long series that has only recently been shown in public. In a previously released work included in Fragments for a lover’s video (an exhibition of short videos curated by Jose Alejandro Restrepo – the title is a take on Roland Barthes’ book) the subject has hoaxed into reading randomly chosen fragments of Saussure’s Linguistics while she masturbated. Over the duration of the video, the voice is subdued by the cries of pleasure until orgasm overcomes discourse (or rather becomes it -as the title would suggest). But while we assist in a private act made public, the identity of the performer remains unknown. In Dido, the situation is inversed: all we can see is the face. Structured like a romantic Lied and set to Dockhausen, this short video explores the layers of mediation that separate pornography form what is not considered as such. The issue of exploitation is also a blurry one: Salazer is projecting his desiring gaze on his subjects, but it is always the female performer who commands her pleasure.