Suchtgarten
Jakob Lass
Germany | 2012 | 9 min
World premiere
Language : German
Subtitle : English
What is the relation between the urge to satisfy oneself and the ritual between a man and his computer looking for pornography? Suchtgarten explores how a digital addiction creates a new version of an alienated sex drive. Suchtgarten questions our notions about desire and pleasure. Thus Internet sex becomes a metaphor for a society that has failed to answer the basic existential needs of women and men.
According to the French surrealist writer Alfred Jarry, sex has nothing to do with bodies or love. It is the ultimate speech of (man-)machines (as explored in his “Le surmâle”). Where does this idea leave us when it comes down to pornography and Internet sex? What is the relation between the desire or urge to satisfy oneself and the ritual between a man and his computer? If sex is more about machines than bodies, then pornography must be the ghost that haunts the machine. Suchtgarten explores the line that separates the actual body that sits this side of the PC screen and the relation it nurtures with the downloaded images. The mechanics of desire become the key to understanding how a digital addiction creates its own version of an alienated sex drive. Without showing one image of “actual” sex, Suchtgarten questions all our notions about desire and pleasure. The melancholic gaze of the Internet porn consumer becomes the paradigm of a society that has commoditized sex and bodies but has repeatedly failed to answer the basic needs that allow women and men to live according to their desires.
GIONA A. NAZZARO
c.marx@filmuniversitaet.de
distribution@hff-potsdam.de+493316202564
+493316202564