BDSM Dialogues
BDSM Dialogues is a multiproject that encompasses various works of artistic research, using BDSM practices from a transfeminist and cuir/queer perspective.
Through these projects, we aim to analyze and explore new ways of engaging in sexual and affective communication practices through BDSM, as well as to produce a contrasexuality that allows us to touch each other in non-normative ways.
This multiproject began in 2021 with Breaking the Boundaries of the Skin, in which we analyzed how, through a bite, the person being bitten receives part of the identity of the one who bites—and vice versa. The project took shape through a plaster mold of the bite and a photograph of the marked body, showing the bite mark as a trace of identity.
To contextualize the project, this idea began to take shape during the COVID-19 pandemic—an event that undoubtedly influenced the development of both our artistic and academic practices. Suddenly, everyone was concerned with how interpersonal and, more specifically, counter-sex-affective relationships would unfold in a world where anyone could be a source of contagion and where touch was almost forbidden. However, feeling like a source of contagion was nothing new for sexual dissidences. In this project, we speak of how identity can be transmitted through the bite.
Breaking the boundaries of the skin (2021) belonging to the BDSM Dialogues project (2021-in progress), from the multiproject Imaginaries of Lovers (2021-in progress)
Plaster and digital color photography.
Within this same framework, we created an experimental text published in Parole de Queer, where we developed an internal monologue in two voices. While theorizing about BDSM, we reflected on our own positionality and personal experience. Later, we contributed another text for the fanzine Liberated Hormones, part of Superdyke Against the Binary Code, published by Parole de Queer and GalletaMaría.
We understand stone as a broad concept that encompasses a gender spectrum beyond the traditional notion of stone—that is, the stone butch as a dysphoric and traumatized person who refuses to be touched. We propose it instead as a plural identity (stone femme, stone queer, stone cuir, stone butch, etc.) that can adopt a non-normative stance toward sex. In this sense, we can broaden our understanding of stone and move away from seeing this people as traumatized subjects who sacrifice their own pleasure for that of their sexual partners. Thinking stone through the lens of ace identities offers a way to shift the meaning of what we traditionally understand as pleasure—conceived here in a wide, diverse spectrum.
(Fragment of the performative conference Penetrate with the Teeth: Stone* and Ace Practices from BDSM.)
In 2024, we carried out the project Penetrate with the Teeth, where we continued exploring the idea of identity transfer through pain and artistic process. Penetrate with the Teeth is a performative lecture that seeks to present artistic process, research, and sex as three practices that can occur simultaneously. Each time it is performed, the themes we address vary.
The first presentation took place at the Post-Sexualities II conference, as a performative action titled Penetrate with the Teeth: Stone* and Ace Practices from BDSM. This performance focused on the relationship between stone* and ace identities within BDSM practices. While discussing these topics, we engaged in an artistic process (creating bite print impressions) alongside a simultaneous kink sexual practice.
We use artistic methodologies as tools for finding sexual practices through which to experience contrasexuality. With this artistic research, we sought to mutate and re-signify the concepts of “touch” and “penetrate”, proposing bites as a non-normative way of entering the skin and communicating through the pressure exerted by the teeth on it—“the harder I bite, the louder I speak.”
Penetrating with the teeth: stone* and asex practices from BDSM (2024) belonging to the BDSM Dialogues project (2021-in progress), from the multiproject Imaginaries of Lovers (2021-in progress)
Performative lecture. Paper and black watercolor ink.