[ecrea] CFP: Gorizia Spring School 2017 - Porn Studies Section - Video (R)Evolutions

CALL FOR PAPERS / DEADLINE EXTENSION!
Gorizia Spring School 2017
29 March – 1 April, Gorizia
PORN STUDIES SECTION

Video (R)Evolutions

The aim of the section is to explore the historical impact of video 
technologies on pornographic production, representation and consumption. 
Starting from the second half of the 1980s, the video revolution 
dramatically hit the adult business, changing forever the way in which 
audio-visual pornography was created and experienced.
This process implied first of all the gradual and relatively quick shift 
from a mostly public form of porn consumption (in movie theatres and 
arcades) to the privacy of home video viewing, and the subsequent total 
and irreversible reconversion to video of the major Western porn companies.
The expressive possibilities allowed by video technologies also had 
important consequences on the development of new forms of pornographic 
production and representation. The lower production costs and the 
enhanced user-friendliness of such technologies created an unprecedented 
spread of amateur pornography, “in which (presumably) ordinary folks 
originally exchange video-taped sexual performance” (Williams 1999: 
303). Moreover, the necessity to renovate and diversify the pornographic 
market – dominated by repetitive films “that featured plumbers, pizza 
delivery boys and other tissue-paper thin plots” (Pipe 2004) – brought 
some directors and producers to a more sophisticated use of video 
technologies in so-called gonzo pornography. According to Peter 
Alilunas, in fact, “gonzo films creatively incorporate[d] the economic 
and technological characteristics of video production and reception to 
turn them into an aesthetic practice” (2016: 206) demonstrating the 
“internalization of the conditions of production” (James 1989: 12). 
Pornography was also heavily influenced by the aesthetics of television 
sub-genres such as video-clip and advertising: authors like Andrew Blake 
and Michael Ninn produced high budget features, “enhanced by a dreamlike 
and elegant style of direction that enclose[d] the sex act in a 
composition dominated by visual elements, similar to the style of 
computer graphic” (Adamo 2004: 13). Finally, the simplification and 
“domestication” (Juffer 1998) of pornographic production and 
distribution paved the way for a multiplication and differentiation of 
pornography in relation to different market niches. This process of 
sectorization allowed new, militant subjects into the market, with their 
different set of pornographic discourses targeting previously 
“neglected” audiences – especially heterosexual and homosexual women.
Drawing on these premises, we invite papers that reflect on:
− the pornographic video era, from its origins to its developments in 
the digital era
− transformations of the feature-length narrative hard-core film during 
the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s
− new pornographic video genres and subgenres
− pornography and television, music, fashion
− arty porn (Andrew Blake, Michael Ninn, Gregory Dark, …)
− from film loop to video vignette
− from wall-to-wall to gonzo
− gonzo pioneers (Jamie Gillis, John Stagliano, Rodney Moore, Ed Powers, 
Ben Dover…)
− gonzo evolutions, from Buttman to Bang Bros
− from polaroid and 8mm to the birth of the “video amateur”
− the birth of alternative pornographies during the 1980s
− new bodies, races, genders in video and early digital pornography
− the pioneers of feminist pornography (Femme Productions, Fatale Video, …
− from the arcade to the video rental shop: changes in pornographic 
consumption and distribution

References
Adamo, Pietro. 2004. Ιl porno di massa. Percorsi nell’hard 
contemporaneo. Milan: Raffaello Cortina.
Alilunas, Peter. 2016. Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation 
of Adult Video. Berkeley: California University Press.
James, David. 1989. Allegories of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton 
University Press.
Juffer, Jane. 1998. At Home with Pornography: Women, Sex and Everyday 
Life. New York: New York University Press.
Pipe, Roger T. 2004. “Adventures of Buttman, The.” Rogreviews, February 
22. Accessed 15 April 2016.
Williams, Linda. 1999. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of 
the Visible”. Berkeley: University of California Press.
The organizers invite single papers and panel proposals

New Deadline for proposals: January 8, 2017

Authors will be notified by January 10, 2017 if their proposals have 
been accepted.
Proposals should not exceed one page in length. Please make sure to 
attach a short CV (10 lines max).
A registration fee (€ 150) will be applied.
Submit proposals to: (goriziafilmforum /at/ gmail.com)

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