THE MANNEQUIN OR THE SECOND SKIN

The "sexual revolution" was nothing but a neutralisation of all sexuality by its extension to all significations. It is a spectable, an imperative, an advertisement, the fetishes are no longer private or anti-social as in de Sade - they are compulsory, they are normalised, they are transparent. Transparency is not a radical idea but a fundamental demand of the system today. Michel Foucault in the History of Sexuality (vol. 1) shows how all sexuality including deviations are "confessed" so that the code can be total. Read Penthouse, Forum. Every sexual possibility is catalogued on some cheap porno movie to be reproduced by us in our pravate lives.

The body has become entirely sexualised / but sex without qualities. Nudity is sexually redundant, the body having passed to a mannequin to focus signs, clothing, restaurant, car etc. The body is fetished as a manipulation of masks, the idea of the optimum body, become nothing but the "you" of the advertisement - fragmented and reconstituted as a model.

Both sexes suffer from this manipulation, women because their bodies are the primary locus of transformation (from adornment, to diets and "beauty" treatments, to plastic surgery). Men, because their aesthetic and sexual response is conditioned by the repetition of the image of the "preffered" body.

That this ideal has changed historically, several times even in the last century, is proof enough that there can be no standard measure of beauty in any sense, visual or by extension aural (musical). From the plump Victorian women on postcards from the era, through the thin 20's, the busty, pinched waists of the 50's and now the work-out bodies of the 80's we are either being pressured to conform or to respond uniformity to what we see.

Purely by repetition and the complex web of sexual signs and social significations surrounding this display it is almost impossible to avoid being seduced by the common denominator. And we must never forget the real damage being done to the very lives of those who don't or can't approximate the dominant model.

SPK's film and visual displays of less than perfect bodies is juxtaposition with the iconographic type brings into focus a question of the very basis of our aesthetic and sexual judgements. This is not a freak show or a horror show but a confrontation of the dominant sexual aesthetic with its own by-product or reverse angle - a challenge to re-evaluate our narrow judgemental perspective, closely linked as it is simply to perpetuating the consumption cycle.

text: Lustmord

BBC Radio producer jailed over sex tapes

A BBC radio producer who secretly filmed himself having sex with five different women has been jailed for eight months.

Inner London Crown Court heard Benjamin Wilkins was caught when his girlfriend found a stash of DVDs in his loft.

Judge Roger Chapple told Wilkins he had "betrayed" the trust of his victims.

The 37-year-old secretly taped a series of sexual liaisons with lovers, including TV and radio presenters, using a hidden camera in his bedroom.

The court heard he hid one camera in his bathroom and another in the fire alarm directly above a bed in his London flat.

'Dirty and sick'

They were linked to his computer which allowed him to transfer the films to DVD.

The sex tapes were made over a three-year period from 2005, but Wilkins dismantled the system before his girlfriend, with whom he had a son, moved into the home.

His girlfriend found and watched a film, then sent it to the woman involved who decided to go to the police.

A victim impact statement made by one of the women, who can not be identified, was read to the court.

She said she was too ashamed to tell her family what had happened, adding it left her "feeling violated, dirty and sick" and needing counselling after she found out what he had done.

The judge said the effect on the women that had been filmed had to be considered when sentencing Wilkins.

He added: "What you did represents a cruel, selfish betrayal of the trust they put in you."

Wilkins pleaded guilty to 11 charges of voyeurism at Camberwell Magistrates' Court earlier this year.

Nicola Kay, defending Wilkins, said: "Of course, he has had to inform his own family which has been a shock for his elderly mother."

He has been ordered to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years.

He has recently been profiled in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success, where Gladwell looks at the reasons behind why Langan was unable to flourish in a university environment. Gladwell writes that although Langan "read deeply in philosophy, mathematics, and physics" as he worked on the CTMU, "without academic credentials, he despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal". Gladwell's profile on Langan mainly portrayed him as an example of an individual who failed to realize his potential in part because of poor social skills resulting from, in Gladwell's speculation, being raised in poverty.

Police in Iran have arrested internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his family.

Plainclothes police broke into Mr Panahi's family home and arrested him, his wife and daughter and 15 other guests, his son Panah told reporters.

The director, known for his social realism, has made several films critical of Iran's regime.

The Tehran prosecutor's office has confirmed the arrest to reporters but denied it was connected to politics.


Last year a travel ban was imposed on Mr Panahi by the authorities after he appeared wearing green - the colour of opposition supporters - at the Montreal film festival.

He was also briefly arrested after attending a memorial to student Neda Agha Soltan, killed at an opposition rally last June.

LOS ANGELES – Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hotspot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland and Vancouver the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens — tomorrow or decades from now — the consequences could be devastating.

Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last 2 to 5 minutes — strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

Such a quake would also send powerful tsunami waves rushing to shore in minutes. While big cities such as Portland and Seattle would be protected from severe flooding, low-lying seaside communities may not be as lucky.