Mejor no

Taking censorship as the active mechanism that is responsible for monitoring, establishing and enforcing the dynamic limit of “the sayable and the visible”, it is observed that, throughout history, this mechanism has offered eroticism more or less suggestive elements on which to manifest and present itself to society. These elements include images, symbolic representations and concrete staging.

Censorship acts by continually reviewing new “unspeakables”, that is, those topics or forms that current morality considers problematic or taboo. In doing so, it forces the displacement of eroticism towards other forms of representation that attempt to temporarily circumvent the restriction.

This work, therefore, works with those elements and symbolism loaded with erotic suggestion, but self-censors in the process. This act of self-censorship is a reflection of how it appears in the time and context in which it is situated. By operating under this restrictive gaze, the work exposes the crucial question of what allows these elements to remain in that space of contestation: Are they censored for being erotic, or do they become erotic by the simple fact of being censored?

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

In the need to talk about eroticism and fall into one’s own censorship to address the theme such as that put in the work, this is based on the same experience, taking his own experience as a starting point.

(Gilman, 2003, cited in Dialnet) says: “the meanings of the erotic are constituted as topics of symbolic dispute when the “sayable and the visible” in relation to it undergo mutations, resignifying the problematic and redefining the unspeakable within the configuration of an era” For Gilman, the meaning of eroticism (what is considered “sexy,” attractive, or taboo) is neither universal nor biological, but is socially and culturally constructed. It is a symbolic battlefield fighting to impose the definition of what is an acceptable pleasure and what is a perversion.

This is the crucial concept. Each historical era has its own set of semiotic-discursive regimes, the border of “the sayable and the visible” moves, trying to silence a society at a given moment, keeping eroticism in a state of mutation and dispute. I mean, the search for new media and developments of creative strategies to sustain behind the shadow of something, our mental pornography, is nothing new, as emojis have shown us in recent years.

Cesar aira says “From there comes the formula ‘anything’ can be taken both as a formula of freedom and irresponsibility” taking this fragment as the blip of something/elements/forms taking on a new meaning at a certain time, casually or not touching the erotic, its liberation and censorship.

Literature

AIRA, César. ([2013], 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56.

Schaufler, M. L. (2016). Potencial erótico de la censura mediática. L.I.S. Letra. Imagen. Sonido. Ciudad Mediatizada, 6(12), 29–45.