Facing Race Pleasure

Though the concepts of agency and consent might be perceived as modern concepts, they both have roots in broader notions of freedom and power. Both consent and agency, that is having the capacity to enact one’s right to freedom and power, have particular resonance in art making.  
White writers’ and artists’ have histories of depicting enslaved black people and other exploited subjects in their works as “happy” and “content with their subjugation.¹ The unhoused Black men who Barbara DeGenevieve photographed and videotaped were given temporary housing, food, and compensation. The artists’ incentives invite questions of how subjects, who belong to groups that hold less social, economic and political power, exercise their agency and consent. The artist also invites one of her subjects to gain an erection on camera, which was not his idea nor is it clear if having an erect sexual organ was negotiated at the time of their agreement to participate in the project. A person’s manipulation of another person’s body, particularly an already hypersexualized and racialized sexual organ of a person belonging to a multiply marginalized person, can be interpreted as coercion. Additionally, the size and representations of black men’s genitalia continue to be sources of fascination, pleasure, and profit for whites and other non-blacks. Although potentially coercive tactics like providing pornographic materials may not meet the legal definition of sexual assault, it may be perceived as morally questionable by some. 

Pornography has gained mainstream acceptance as a form of art and work that affirms the agency of people who gain income in a wide variety of sexually provocative ways. Sex workers have valiantly fought for the rights over their bodies and their images for decades, and this project is an excellent opportunity to bring these histories of advocacy and fights for bodily autonomy into conversation with art making. 

The participants in the Panhandler Project may have felt empowered to be seen as both human and desirable. Yet the artist’s tactics of getting the “money shot” version of the reclining nude by the introduction of an external stimulus/pornography call their subjects’ agency and the history of White artists’ representations of the “happy negro/slave” represent points of artistic and interpretative curiosity.  

¹ See an example: This lithograph “shows an idealized portrayal of American slavery and the conditions of blacks under this system in 1841” - Library of Congress.

• How are ideas of agency, consent, coercion relevant or irrelevant in The Panhandler Project?
• How might some survivors of sexual violence and trafficking and their allies experience the artist’s methods used in The Panhandler Project?
• How does the use/provision of alcohol influence one’s ability to consent to participate in an interaction?
• What perspective emerges when the positionality of the educated white woman artist and the unhoused black male subjects switch? 
  • Would the hypothetical black male artist’s white peers celebrate this project?
  • Would his white peers prioritize the safety and vulnerability of the black male artist’s unhoused nude white women subjects?
  • Would this hypothetical black male artist have been celebrated by his white peers if they discovered he may have used the alcohol that is shown in the project?
  • Do you feel this work has been featured in art shows if the roles, artistic practices, and representations were reversed? Why or Why not?
  • Do the concepts of consent, agency, and coercion come into focus when the race and gender identities are hypothetically inverted?

Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power
Audre Lorde | Essay in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches | Crossing Press | p. 49-55 | 1984

The Use of Human Subjects in Art: Statement of Principles and Suggested Considerations
College Art Association of America | October 2011

The Fundamentals of Photographic Consent
Savannah Dodd | Photography Ethics Centre | 2022

Performance Art, Pornography, and the Mis-spectator: The Ethics of Documenting Participatory Performance
Adriana Disman | Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 162 | p. p. 46-51 | Spring 2015

Photographers Need to Reexamine What Consent Means [opinion piece]
Jacqui Palumbo | Artsy | Jun 2019

What Do Photographers Owe Their Subjects? Four Photographers Weigh In
Alina Cohen | Artsy | Aug 2018

Please note: Many of these A/V resources are more generalized topics, but related to the above themes and could be used for broader context

Consent, Power + Trauma in Ethical Storytelling with Joy McBrien
Manpreet Kalra with Joy McBrien | Art of Citizenry Podcast | Ep. 5 | 43 min. | August 2020
This podcast DOES NOT include transcripts

Anti-Blackness in the Movement: 5-Part Series
National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) | Resource On the Go Podcast | June 2022
This podcast DOES include transcripts

Consent Conversations: Consent & Art [Video]
Consent Academy conversation with director of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival | 45 min | October 2021