(W/HOLE)
Premiere: January 4-6, 2019
@ The Invisible Dog Art Center (Brooklyn, NY)
Rehearsals + Research beginning 2017
Residency: Snug Harbor Cultural Center July 2017
Residency Showing: June 24, 2017
Shoot Dates; June 6-15, 2018
Cast and Crew:
created by AORTA films in collaboration with
the A.O. Movement Collective
Mahx Capacity (director)
Parts Authority (performer)
Trouble Clef (performer)
Papi Femme (performer)
Special Guest (performer)
Shay Knox (performer)
Erykah Ohms (performer)
the Shape (performer)
Evie Snax (performer)
Ginny Woolf (performer)
Alice the Wolfe (performer)
HOLYRAD studio (cinamatographer)
Lanee Bird (editor + color)
Lanee Bird + Saskia de Borchgrave (DPs)
Daryl Oh (Lighting Designer)
Wet Henry (composer)
Papi Femme (costume consultant)
Shane Screams (service)
Samantha Naomi (PA)
Confirmed support:
Commissioned by The Invisible Dog Art Center with Executive Producer The Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity. This work was developed in part, during a residency at Snug Harbor Cultural Center Botanical Garden. Additional support came from AORTA films' Benefactor Circle Jerk and Kickstarter backers.
World Premiere:
The Invisible Dog Art Center / USA / January 4-6, 2019
Official Selections:
Vienna Porn Film Festival, Official Selection / Austria / April 4-8, 2019 - WINNER, Best Film, Fiction
Hacker Porn Film Festival, Opening Film / Rome / April 24-30, 2019 - WINNER, Best Feature Film
London Porn Film Festival, Closing Film / London / April 26-28, 2019
Ladyfest Maastricht, Official Selection / Netherlands / May 5, 2019
Berlin Porn Film Festival, Official Selection / Berlin / October 22-27, 2019
Excerpts:
”Pleasure Narrations”, BRIEFS Erotic Short Film Competition, Official Selection / USA / February 21, 2019
”Overflow”, Sex/Work First Person Plural Salon, Featured Presenter / USA / March 3, 2019
”FEAST”, Movement Research at the Judson Church / USA / April 15, 2019
(W/HOLE) is an evening-length film created by queer/feminist porn collective AORTA films in collaboration with performance company the A.O. Movement Collective. Verbally pronounced “whole,” this feature length film seeks to explore the incredible potency of queer hedonism, specifically how the authentic performativity of kink and queer porn can evolve trauma into orgasm, and grief into politically radical, transformative, body-based joy. This work aims to negotiate pornographic embodiment as an anti-oppressive, trans-inclusive feminist practice rooted in femme caretaking and risk, and contextualizes itself as a choreographic process. (W/HOLE) investigates the complexity of pleasure, exploring the so-called obscenity of bodies in their most tremendous capacity—their glorious, illicit humanity.
At turns lush, humorous, sincere, erotic, joyful, and intense, (W/HOLE) forsakes traditional expectations of “porn” to create an unexpectedly textured landscape of desire. Amidst ecstatic water balloon fights, opulent feasts devoured without utensils, narrations of pleasure, lewd hand gestures, densely scored orgies, improvisational performance, and intense kink dynamics, (W/HOLE) proposes a new type of pornography: a world of queer sex that is at once surreally lush and intensely real. The film celebrates queer pleasure as a type of queer resistance, while inviting viewers of all identities towards their own human capacity for pleasure.
In investigating pleasure as inherently entwined with the complexities of loss and struggle, the AOMC’s director Sarah A.O. Rosner writes “Experimental pornography is the ideal media for this endeavor. Cutting through experimental performance’s insularity and entrenchment within systems of white supremacy, pornography is immediate, incendiary: undeniably legible. Like live performance, queer porn powerfully triggers authentic, instantaneous responses which a viewer must rectify with their preexisting selfhood. It kicks hairline fractures into oppressive systems, explicitly centering the humanity of individuals traditionally devalued by capitalism, ableism, racism, and transmisogyny.”
(W/HOLE) positions itself interstitially, between the margins of experimental live performance, queer/feminist pornography, and dancefilm. Filmed by Holyrad Studio and edited and colored by Lanee Bird with an original score composed by Ashur Rayis, the work features an interdisciplinary cast of performers—three dance performers, five adult performers, and two crossover performers who work in both fields. Created and directed by Mahx Capacity and choreographed by Sarah A.O. Rosner, the film was developed in collaboration with the performers, and through AORTA films’ “F*CKLAB” practice.
(W/HOLE) was commissioned by the Invisible Dog Art Center and supported by a grant from the Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity, the film’s Executive Producer. This work was developed in part, during a residency at Snug Harbor Cultural Center Botanical Garden
AORTA films makes experimental queer/feminist cinema for our impending post-human future. Led by founders Creative Director Mahx Capacity, and Performer/Producers Parts Authority and Ginny Woolf, AORTA films seeks to create ethical, lusty, heartfelt content that disrupts boundaries and glitches desire. Working out of DIY and experimental performance contexts, they are interested in creating content that centers performers across a wide range of bodies, genders, races, and identities. They work collaboratively, prioritizing safe and enthusiastically consensual creative processes, and are obsessed with creating aesthetics and narratives that explode with destabilizing pleasure.
Founded in 2006 by Sarah A.O. Rosner, the A.O. Movement Collective has made a name for themselves as ravenously experimental young makers in NYC’s performance community. The AOMC investigates pomo-humanism via a rigorous love affair with the aesthetics of mess. They are rockstars, researchers, ever-glitching techno-feminists. Their work unpacks the difficult lushness of human being, valuing questions above answers and maximalism above ease. They create work open to the terror of being undeniably new in content, culture, and form.
Websites: www.aortafilms.com, www.theaomc.org
Instagram: @aortafilmswillneverdie, @theaomc
Facebook: @AORTAfilms, @theAOMC