Syd Blakovich is a performer, producer and multidisciplinary artist that has created a few of the most controversial statements in queer, alternative, transgendered and art house porn. This will be our first interview here at APS so we thought it would be best to take it somewhere that we felt would set the tone for the interviews to come…

Syd (to us) seems like one of the people that can really explain what is happening in the San Fransisco Alt/Queer Porn movement in general. The scene there has been and is still creating a respected group of accomplished producers and performance artist. You may question us calling porn stars ‘performance artists’ but the fact of the matter is.. that is exactly the point we intend to make with this interview and other articles to come in the future… Alt Porn is ArtPorn although it has been scrutinized that this kind of thinking over-intellectualizes ‘porn’. Some more mainstream critics argue that and that porn is without artistic merit by definition, alt.porn questions the definition of porn in every way. Movements in art such as Dada and Deconstruction question the very idea of art itself in mainstream and counterculture, similar to AltPorn and ArtPorn in its medium.

On the front page of her website Syd is very to the point, hopefully in this installment if AltArt we can open a few topics of discussion, with an artist that is quickly becoming our favorite person to ask questions. About any topic.. here are a few..

” I believe that porn is the new contemporary medium of the feminist and queer art movements. “

Please expand a bit on this statement..

I am coming from a liberal arts educational background and the roots of my interest in the adult industry were inspired by what I saw as the intersections of art and pornography, specifically within the works of the emerging feminist and queer artists of the 1970′s and 80′s. This time not only marked the emergence and recognition of prominent female artist’s such as Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneemann and the success of the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe but also presented the advent of pornography and it’s Golden Era. American culture at this time was the birthplace of these art forms and mediums and fostered the growth of these industries, both of which rode the technological crest of accessible video documentation and ideas of the body being both the object and the vehicle of the work. Conceptually you will also see an overlap with these art genres and pornography within our cultural consciousness. Many artists in both the fields of pornography and fine art have encountered social prejudice executed through guise of what is ascribed as “obscene” (I quote this because their still are many states that find interracial depictions of sex to be obscene according to community standards, which in turn are used to define the law). “Obscenity” has always been a legally ambiguous term used to uphold antiquated notions of cultural decency, which are more often than not used against women, sexual and racial minorities. Through this process, both pornography and queer/feminist have been boxed into a culturally imposed identity that occupies the territories that are both abject and outlaw.

Describe your theories on exchange and the ways that sexual advancement is similar to the art of war or the power struggle that freely happens between people having sex? How is this Art?

I am not sure I entirely understand what you mean by “sexual advancement” but I will try and answer this question the best I can. For me power play is an essential ingredient to my sexuality. We live in a world saturated with hierarchies, struggle, oppression, supreme imbalances in the distribution of wealth, and other systems of control. I would argue that it is damn near impossible to escape the ideas and mechanisms that pervade not only our society but the world at large, so of course not only are our identities going to be impacted by all this, but our sexualities as well as the arts. Human nature or nurture, either way we are all influenced by it. I am not even going to open the can of worms of the age-old debate of “But what is Art?” but rather say that for me, life, art and sex are all one big performance piece on a living breathing canvas. Oh look, I think I just got some cultural theory in your porn.

What was the most powerful instance of this occurrence in your performances and how does that equate to your personal life?

Tell us about Pink and White Productions…

Pink & White Productions is a San Francisco based, independent, adult, production company primarily owned and operated by queer women of color. Director and founder Shine Louise Houston graduated from San Francisco Institute for the Arts with a BFA in film. After working a stint in the adult retail business, recognized a huge deficiency in high quality porn that represented queers and gender variant folk. Shine’s directorial methods focuses on integrating the sophisticated visual dialog traditionally associated with the art of film making with ideas of authenticity that are tied in with documentary styles of cinematography. Her work is highly crafted and rendered with an acute consideration for the subject which she is documenting. At the core of Pink & White Production’s films is the concept of making work that reflects the community of which we are a part of. It’s about creating representations of sexualities that we identify with, that are generated through personal narratives. It’s acknowledging our own impact in image making, taking the subjectivity of the producer and making it the object of the work. It’s greatly infused with a post-modern awareness of the self and making a theater based on the sexual aspects of this. 

What is your involvement with Pink and White?

I am a performer, webmaster (crashpadseries.com), and co-producer for Pink and White Productions

Do you have any plans to Direct Features that you are not performing in and if so with who?

I really love producing and contributing that way. I don’t have a real desire to be behind a camera right now but if I do I imagine it would be gonzo. I kind of fucking love gonzo and the lo-fi homemade aesthetic. There’s a sense of intimacy it get from the grittiness of it, which I think is unbelievably hot.

What was your latest release?

The latest release I did with my own company is called Champion, which is an MMA love story porn with real fight and fuck scenes. I think the next video I am in that is about to be released is Madison Young’s Art House, which I perform in as my performance art duo with my partner Jiz Lee called twincest (www.twincest.net). It’s very surreal; we fuck on a bed of lunchmeat and fellate hot dogs.

Also check out NoFauxxx.com’s new release Roulette, which I am in a bar side gangbang.

What was your favorite scene?

Hmm, I get asked this question a lot and it’s really hard to say. The fact that I get to regularly work with so many of my close friends and lovers is absolutely amazing. My first scene for Pink & White Productions with Jiz Lee in the DVD “The Crash Pad” was phenomenal particularly so because it was so emotionally heated. Jiz and I are real life partners and it was the first time we worked together, we also weren’t supposed to be having sex at the time, which made it even hotter. Most recently, I shot with Madison Young for the first time for our newest movie, Champion, and it flowed so well. To be honest with you, I am a bit of a sadist and was overjoyed to work with her because she not only can take pretty much anything you throw at her, but she LOVES it. I love my job. I also shot my first traditional b/g scene, which was far from traditional and had a magnificent time.

How do you feel that alternative porn is effected by queer porn vs. gay porn in mainstream and how do you think the balance between them all works out?

My hope is that there can be some integration and dialog between queer and gay porn, both contributing to the other on certain levels, perhaps overlap of stars and talent as well as concept. We all are most certainly influenced by what we see and are surrounded by. I think gay porn has had a huge impact on my own sexuality and the way I perform. I think a lot of it is super hot; my number one wank off material is gay porn. I actually would love to work with some of the more mainstream gay performers….

(Holy shit…Logan McCree!)

What makes a scene queer or alternative to you?

There is this inherent quality in my own view of alternative queer porn that screams collaboration. There is a freedom in performing that seems highly creative and filled with improv that comes straight from the performers’ heart, almost like a personal sexual narrative. It’s not about executing a sequence of moves or positions.

How long have you been making pornography?

I started in 2005, working for Kink.com and Pink & White Productions.

What was the first scene you ever did as a performer?

My very first video scene was for Kink.com’s UltimateSurrender, which is a competitive wrestling site. I LOVE wrestling, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and many other forms of combat fighting. It’s what I do in my free time.

What was the first scene you ever did behind the camera?

Co-production for Pink & White, I was involved since the beginning with our first feature “The Crash Pad.”

How do you feel about the porn expos and the big business of it all, do you embrace the crowd or are you more of a performance and creative type that likes the studio, and the production process more?

I think expos are a great place to network if you work in the industry with other like-minded folk. However, I am more likely to run into one of my fans at the local organic produce market than at one of these things so that’s not why I got. I go as a business owner. The crowds that tend to be at these things are not really my demographic so I do feel a bit out of place there, but I have never met a fan of mine that I didn’t like.

With sites like NoFauxxx and Pink and White creating queer porn, also considered altporn in the Bay area do you feel that is somehow a culture that exists there? Is San Fran the home of Queer Alt Porn?

Most definitely. You have had companies like SIR Productions, NoFauxxx, Kink.com, Trannywood Pictures and Pink & White springing out of the Bay Area for years along with many other kink and gay companies. SF is the big queer mecca of sexuality on many different levels.

Some of our favorite producers and performers are in the Bay area, are there any under the radar or up and coming stars or producers you are working with that people should know about?

If you haven’t check out Morty Diamond or Trannywood Pictures you really should. They are on the forefront of trans sexuality and are really redefining trans porn. I am also a big fan of what Audacia Ray is doing and happen to be a fan of more established folks such as Belladonna, Eon McKai, Madison Young and Tristan Taormino. Check out Maria Beatty and Emilie Jouvet.

Syd Blakovich

Co-Producer for Pink and White Productions

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This is the and ‘and and and and’ part of the interview what/who we’re talkin about more.

Carolee Schneemann, multidisciplinary artist. Transformed the definition of art, especially discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender. The history of her work is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body. &&&&find out more>

Marshall McLuhan &&&&Find out more>

Syd Blakovich interviewed by St@rFckr staff writer at APS Tuesday Feb 24th 2009.

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