An online collaborative research residency supported by Live Art Development Agency.
HELLO SIR
began as a collaborative online art residency supported by the Live Art Development Agency, responding to the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This provided me space to make a short film and to write about my experience as an artist who also happens to be queer, disabled and a sex-worker. The collaboration was between myself and a long-term sex work client. This zine focuses on the working process of making the film, reflections on collaboration, patronage and power. Relationships between individuals, State, and the intersecting experiences of disability, sex worker, artist and low waged worker.
ONE THREE ZERO
In the past ten years of working online as a webcam Dominatrix,I have made over 130 short ‘pay per view’ porn clips. Most featuring me talking to camera about the fetishes of ‘homo conversion’: forcing my clients to be gay, or ‘Sissy-fication’: enforced cross dressing. The irony being I’m genderqueer Dyke who’s often read as straight in the mainstream world. One of my most visibly queer spaces has been online with my clients, visitors who often address me as ‘Sir’.
Hello Sir, the film features my porn footage inter-cut with video of myself in Drag, making commentary on how weird heterosexuality really is and the false dichotomy between worlds; of online or offline, gay or straight, masculine or feminine, paid or unpaid.
The collaboration was an experiment between myself and a long-term sex work client I had a friendship with. The process of making the film meant that I explored disparities intensified by the pandemic. Our collaboration raised issues about work, paid or unpaid, of economies, class and visibility. Many of the common divides in society came into even sharper contrast as more people lost their job security and income.
This writing began as a diary without dates because in Lockdown it was always Wednesday or Monday or surprisingly Friday again. In retrospect there ARE important dates. Since mid-March in 2020 living indoors. Like many of my Crip friends observing rising infection rates I made my own decision about avoiding infection, not waiting for the government to do anything.
For some the social isolation during Covid was a novelty, a phenomena that would end. For others, lockdown amplified the conditions that were already there. As a disabled person Lockdown improved my social life and the amount of support I had. Meetings and events I was normally too exhausted to travel to moved online. In my usual energy deficit world, a London where getting anywhere on public transport takes at least an hour, I’m usually exhausted by the time I arrive somewhere. Lockdown meant my choices got wider. I went to workshops and events, for the first time in years I went out dancing! via zoom. Help I’ve always needed with shopping and errands suddenly materialised.
I laugh about this ‘sudden’ online life because as a crip and a sex worker, I’ve been living this way for a long time. I know very well what it’s like to have the majority of my social life online. As a ‘Cam Girl’ (sic) I’m a professional at maximising my angles, lighting my chat room, optimising my streaming rate, hosting and chatting online. That (and my tits) is what’s been paying the rent for the last ten years.
FLIP
On the flip side the online market is flooded with sex workers excluded from government help. More clients are online, but so too are amateurs, everyone is trying to figure out how to fuck online.
I wonder about the last years of government attempts to control the Internet through anti-porn laws, of ATVOD in the UK. Or the effects of SESTA/FOSTA that caused a sudden closure of many platforms for sex-work advertising, seriously affecting the livelihoods and safety of sex workers. Pitched as ‘anti trafficking’ laws, the legislation did a lot to control how money can move and who can have a bank account. Now greater numbers of non-sex workers are using the Internet for all manner of things will more people think about how that use is policed?
On sex worker Twitter this morning it’s a mix between nudes, the usual ‘how do you like my new shoes/sunglasses/outfit’ vs ‘why don’t you Venmo/cashap/beemit to me’ Sandwiched between hilarious comments about the Trump vs Biden debate. In the early days of the pandemic sex worker twitter was where I watched others, like myself financially free-falling and wondering how the hell to make a living.
Sex worker Twitter was one of the places I got my news from. Where sex workers debated how to return to in-person work. With the call not to shame those who did go out to work during the pandemic. The message: to be aware of people’s different situations, that not everyone has the same choices. This discourse between Sex workers on work, is one of the clearest critiques of work I’ve heard. Yes, ALL WORK.
