Five issues in, and Aotearotica—New Zealand's first and only erotic literary journal—still struggles to attract the same number of visual submissions from Kiwis as it does written submissions. “The majority of our written work is from Kiwis," says editor Laura Borrowdale.* "Usually, artists are from abroad.”
By Rosie Tong.
She doesn't quite know why, but reckons it might have something to do with New Zealanders' general conservatism when it comes to talking about all things sex. "Maybe it’s part of us being shy. We don’t like necessarily to talk about things too much, to make them obvious, and visual art is a lot more obvious than writing. I have been really intrigued by the disparity between visual art and written work. We’re writing about it much more than we’re illustrating it."
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By Rosie Tong.
It was one of the reasons she began the journal: to get New Zealand talking about having sex, instead of just having it. "Part of the journal is to expand that. Part of the reason we’re not very adventurous is we don’t want to risk. So the moment you ask someone and put yourself out there about something, there’s a chance you’ll be shut down. We don’t like rejection. So we don’t put ourselves out there very much: you just get what you get.”
For volume five, Borrowdale says she was surprised with the thematic consistency. “What I’m surprised by is there’s totally a zeitgeist, just really dominant themes that come out. Like this time we had so many images of hands and bondage, and we haven’t had that in that way before. It felt very distinct somehow.”
What submissions make it into the finished product, of course, relies on Borrowdale's editorial discretion—and she's wary of using the finished journal to draw wider conclusions about the state of the country's collective sex life. “I’m wondering if this says more about my psyche than it does about the New Zealand psyche, because everything goes through me. I’m definitely the filter.”
*Laura Borrowdale is the author's sister.