THE
LATEST BOOK BY PETER SOTOS
Dramatis Personae: 1. David Keenan in Terrorizer, 2. Lucy
McKenzie in Artforum, 3. interview edit by Catherine Itzen
for her book on child pornography, 4. Lynndie England interviewed
by Stern.
1. Ironically, punters have more of a gripe with the following act
(and the first US citizen ever to be charged for possession of child
pornography) Peter Sotos, whose set turns out to be unspectacular.
It consists of a documentary montage featuring victims’ accounts
of the abuse they underwent by paedophiles, while he is allegedly
down the pub -that’s art for you.
2. One would think that because he was the first person in the US
to be charged with possession of child pornography, Sotos could confidently
discount accusations of his having taken an ironic stance vis-a-vis
his material. But the frequency with which his disdain for -or at
least overstated distance from- what he perceives as art is referred
to suggests that this is his real subject. Sotos’s phobic belief
that his own sovereignty depends on his offensivesness and social
disenfranchisement puts him squarely in the traditional transgressor’s
double bind of needing the context he continually derides. This, whether
inadvertent or intentional, augments the book and contributes to Sotos’s
successful rendering of destructive compulsiveness as subject in
Comfort and Critique.
[...] The faces of men photographed by police mugs relayed the exact
same stingily overworked information. This is why the finished edits
can’t be seen as a comment on the material or the social construct.
I can’t do anything about the stupidity and lies that frame this
shit but the collection was designed to be personally perfect - not
highlight or deconstruct modernist theories of the media or vulture
cultures. What was crass for others was irritating to me; I don’t
want to talk to an audience of honesty sifting idiots who wall at
lust and release. Mothers and fathers may appreciate this angle. I
do not. I can’t. I’ve done too much work. The flat unlucky
men I’ve located know these women’s experience differently.
Nobody’s supposed to be ugly, lonely, jealous or vain. Replace
complimentary definitions of sickness with countless degrees of defense.
These poor boys got photographed in the clothes they got arrested
in. List every possible thin concept between fair and judgmental.
Sufficient and tolerable. They have pills for your instabilities and
sad lapses. You can get more for your failure to be properly excited
as well.
3. But I discovered that the longer I was away from the family,
and the breaks between working myself into total exhaustion, I was
beginning to feel sexual arousal on my own. The only way I could handle
this was by masturbation. And I got into excessive masturbation, into
self harming sexually, pushing things inside me to fulfill this sexual
arousal that wasn’t being met either in or out of the family.
This made me feel enormous guilt, and I was afraid people might catch
me and find out. So I lived in total terror the entire time. But I
was absolutely compelled to do it and it was the greatest addiction
at that time for me to recover from.
4. Can you understand that people who look at this photo are offended?
Well, they weren't there. And they don't know what went on and they
don't know how we felt at the time, in that environment and what we
were told to do. But do you understand the outrage? To be honest,
even if I wasn't there, I might think,"Yeah, what the hell was
going on here? What are they doing to him?" But then I'd realize
where it was. And then I'd think, "Oh, well, that's like standard
procedure there."
LORDOTICS is about sex offenders and the art of photography.
Sotos revisiting his previous writings as snapshots, creating pornography
from reviewing pornography. Glory hole culture and heterosexual sex
joints, incest laws and recidivism theories and repetitive degeneration
are all factors in a complex narrative with analogies to the art of
film scripting.
