This article originally appeared on VICE Belgium.Nour Beetch, 23, is a self-proclaimed “genderfuck whore, dragqueer performer, transfeminist author and sex artist”, and Lisa Lapierre, 30, is a photographer, writer and director. The nonbinary couple from Belgium share a fascination with the relationship between intimacy and fantasy, producing work together that examines the representation of queer people in porn. “We decided to use our bodies to send a transgressive message,” the pair tell VICE. “Love can be pornographic, too.”
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One of those projects is OF MANIFESTO, a photographic exploration of fantasy and queer love. Beetch and Lapierre want to “confront people with trash aesthetics that are also kind and gentle, and vulnerability that’s also sexy. We want to show how much we need to transform the world radically”. We spoke to the couple about their photography and their views on sex work, censorship and the world-changing potential of queer porn.
VICE: What inspired the project?
Lisa Lapierre: When we first got together, neither Nour nor I were thinking of collaborating because we had so much on our plates already. But then we ended up taking photos [of] our relationship organically. Nour really educated me on lots of new ideas, political and romantic. When we realised we had this whole body of interesting images, outside the norms of cis het male porn, we started to think about what to do with them, and that’s how we thought of the porn circuit.
Nour Beetch: I’d been thinking for a long time about getting into queer post-porn – that whole world really fascinated me. I felt so desired and loved through Lisa’s lens. I think you can feel that when you look at our photos. We decided we wanted to set the porn world on fire with intimacy and kindness. So you take our love for each other, you add our love of sex and film — and that’s how the project was born.
Lisa Lapierre: When we first got together, neither Nour nor I were thinking of collaborating because we had so much on our plates already. But then we ended up taking photos [of] our relationship organically. Nour really educated me on lots of new ideas, political and romantic. When we realised we had this whole body of interesting images, outside the norms of cis het male porn, we started to think about what to do with them, and that’s how we thought of the porn circuit.
Nour Beetch: I’d been thinking for a long time about getting into queer post-porn – that whole world really fascinated me. I felt so desired and loved through Lisa’s lens. I think you can feel that when you look at our photos. We decided we wanted to set the porn world on fire with intimacy and kindness. So you take our love for each other, you add our love of sex and film — and that’s how the project was born.
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Is this kind of “political” nudity, then?
Beetch: Nudity can be a weapon in the face of cis-heteropatriarchal rules. Our bodies are the first place we experience oppression, so reclaiming them is a liberation. We want to transgress, to take a stick of dynamite to the objectification of our bodies you see in mainstream heteronormative porn. We’re using our flesh and identities as resistance to outdated norms.
Lapierre: Two non-binary people talking about sex, penetration and hybrid bodies is political. What I’m interested in is pushing beyond “political nudity” to arrive at political intimacy. My work deals with extimacy (the sharing of things we usually consider to be, and keep, private) and intimacy, with day-to-day routines, whereas Nour is a militant sex worker and performer. We weren’t trying to make bodies political — they already are.
Beetch: Nudity can be a weapon in the face of cis-heteropatriarchal rules. Our bodies are the first place we experience oppression, so reclaiming them is a liberation. We want to transgress, to take a stick of dynamite to the objectification of our bodies you see in mainstream heteronormative porn. We’re using our flesh and identities as resistance to outdated norms.
Lapierre: Two non-binary people talking about sex, penetration and hybrid bodies is political. What I’m interested in is pushing beyond “political nudity” to arrive at political intimacy. My work deals with extimacy (the sharing of things we usually consider to be, and keep, private) and intimacy, with day-to-day routines, whereas Nour is a militant sex worker and performer. We weren’t trying to make bodies political — they already are.
How do you deal with censorship on social media?
Beetch: I got banned from Instagram and I never recovered my account. I knew it was going to happen. Social media is sexist, racist, whorephobic, fatphobic — and it hates sex workers. Social media censorship is a tool to control our bodies and ideas. Think about it: Who sets the rules, and why? These are capitalist businesses that don’t want us to profit from our sexuality. But they’re happy to profit from it for us. My idea of a utopia would be to create our own queer post-porn platform, with our own sexual politics, outside of any control or censorship.
Lapierre: You do adapt to your networks, though. On Instagram we do business; on OnlyFans we haggle with buyers over our pictures – what we share isn’t censored there, and we can communicate directly with the buyers. That’s how we earn funds for exhibitions, fanzines, books and so on. Although we use a lot of different social media networks to share our activities and some of our images, it’s mostly exhibitions where we really get the chance to show off our work.
Beetch: I got banned from Instagram and I never recovered my account. I knew it was going to happen. Social media is sexist, racist, whorephobic, fatphobic — and it hates sex workers. Social media censorship is a tool to control our bodies and ideas. Think about it: Who sets the rules, and why? These are capitalist businesses that don’t want us to profit from our sexuality. But they’re happy to profit from it for us. My idea of a utopia would be to create our own queer post-porn platform, with our own sexual politics, outside of any control or censorship.
Lapierre: You do adapt to your networks, though. On Instagram we do business; on OnlyFans we haggle with buyers over our pictures – what we share isn’t censored there, and we can communicate directly with the buyers. That’s how we earn funds for exhibitions, fanzines, books and so on. Although we use a lot of different social media networks to share our activities and some of our images, it’s mostly exhibitions where we really get the chance to show off our work.
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So how do you reinvent porn?
Beetch: We have to build a new shared imagination, and we need to use images to overturn all these codes we’ve internalised. We need to create a new queer pleasure and power space – we have to be able to dream outside of our cages. Post-porn means a revolution in how we fantasise; it means reclaiming a new body language. It’s a critique of cis-hetero-phallocentric porn. We show you the intersections of intimacy and politics, art and activism, poetry and trash. It’s an emotional art form, where we transcend limits and establish our distance from norms.
Beetch: We have to build a new shared imagination, and we need to use images to overturn all these codes we’ve internalised. We need to create a new queer pleasure and power space – we have to be able to dream outside of our cages. Post-porn means a revolution in how we fantasise; it means reclaiming a new body language. It’s a critique of cis-hetero-phallocentric porn. We show you the intersections of intimacy and politics, art and activism, poetry and trash. It’s an emotional art form, where we transcend limits and establish our distance from norms.
And how about sex work?
Beetch: I became a prostitute – what some call an escort – almost three years ago and I actually haven’t stopped since. I’m fortunate in that I work in a privileged setting, and I have my papers. Sex work is all about selling its orgasmic force to consumers, and the practices are varied. I realised sex work is a performance, just like gender.
Beetch: I became a prostitute – what some call an escort – almost three years ago and I actually haven’t stopped since. I’m fortunate in that I work in a privileged setting, and I have my papers. Sex work is all about selling its orgasmic force to consumers, and the practices are varied. I realised sex work is a performance, just like gender.
What needs to happen to transform the world in the way you’re talking about?
Beetch: Less politeness, more dissent! We need to explore radical queer politics and subversive, non-colonial ways of living our lives. A radical transformation of the world happens when we decondition our bodies from heteronormativity.
Lapierre: It starts with us questioning everything. We need free therapy, and access to a new education – be it sexual, political, ecological. I always get the sense we don’t know where we came from or where we’re going. I think if we had even the slightest answer to those two questions, we could really transform our own path. But since that’s not going to happen, the best we can do is acknowledge our current wrongs, and build ourselves new values.
Beetch: Less politeness, more dissent! We need to explore radical queer politics and subversive, non-colonial ways of living our lives. A radical transformation of the world happens when we decondition our bodies from heteronormativity.
Lapierre: It starts with us questioning everything. We need free therapy, and access to a new education – be it sexual, political, ecological. I always get the sense we don’t know where we came from or where we’re going. I think if we had even the slightest answer to those two questions, we could really transform our own path. But since that’s not going to happen, the best we can do is acknowledge our current wrongs, and build ourselves new values.
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