Body in Evidence: subversions of pornographic gestural in two digital art products

Abstract

In this article we debate how the meanings of gesture language eroticize bodies in two online artistic references: the amateur videos of people masturbating themselves from the website “Beautiful Agony” (www.beautifulagony.com), which show faces only; and the “My Luxuria” series, by the artist Alex Kliszynski (www.ask-art.net), where in the pictures, models who are naked and in erotic positions have their bodies replaced by bodies which resemble a “Barbie” doll. Once we are facing the images of fractioned bodies we may ask to what extent the meaning forged in the erotic experience finds in the gesture something that widens the possibilities of signification of these images. We believe that the observer sees these images through the lenses of the experience which is responsible for signifying the erotic in his/her ordinary life. Language – verbal or non-verbal – causes the incarnation of the meaning into the experience. Its expressive nature gives shape to ways of “being in the world” and perceiving it.