Jasmin Hagendorfer

As a visual artist, author and festival organizer, you combine various fields of activity. What’s the unifying element and what’s important to you in your work?

Exactly, yes, I combine very different paths in my artistic and cultural work, that’s true. On the one hand, as festival director I’m responsible for the Porn Film Festival Vienna, a film festival that stands for alternative perspectives on a very mainstream subject. On the other hand, I curate exhibitions as a freelance curator, often in the context of the Porn Film Festival, on a wide range of topics, but always with a political, activist, queer-feminist perspective. And lastly, I work as a freelance artist in the field of performance. During the first year of the pandemic, when I graduated from the Academy under Ashley Hans Scheirl, I stumbled into filmmaking and submitted Fudliaks! Tears the Sexes Apart! (Fudliaks! Zerfetzt die Geschlechter) as my diploma project. Since then, I’ve been concentrating on making films. In 2023, for instance, I completed my short film Musings of a Mechatronic Mistress, and lately, I have also been writing a lot.

As you mentioned, you run the Porn Film Festival Vienna and curate contributions as part of the Arse Elektronika Festival. What do you prioritize in the festival itself and in your curating?

We founded the Porn Film Festival Vienna in 2018 with the idea of breaking the taboo and shame associated with pornography. Although pornography is deeply ingrained in society (around 45% of all internet traffic is still pornographic), there are hardly any films on TV without an obligatory sex scene, and magazines always feature half-naked, mostly female bodies – and there’s very little discussion about it. With the festival, our motivation was to create an open space for discussion and reflection, and to show that there are also alternative, feminist and queer-feminist productions apart from the mostly binary mainstream. In my curation, I prioritize selecting both high-end productions and DIY indie works. My first aim is to create a good mix. We want to convey a positive message, promote body positivity and encourage reflection on this topic. We are very open and transparent about sex work, because pornography involves sex work. We aim to highlight feminist issues and encourage different perspectives on pleasure. It’s important to me that the program depicts more of society than is usually the case in pornography.

Does that mean there’s an emphasis on a politically educational aspect?

Yes, the Porn Film Festival Vienna is committed to an educational idea, also because very young people are already coming into contact with this genre. I believe it’s our job as a festival to educate about alternatives, to show what can be seen beyond the male gaze. In the past, we’ve also collaborated with sex educators and schools. I think that even adults can experience something like a second sex education and learn to understand that pornography is a form of consumption. Just as I pay attention to buying organic or ethically produced clothing, why shouldn’t I pay attention to what I’m consuming when it comes to pornography, and for what needs am I even watching it? That’s why we don’t just show films at the festival, but also organize a whole program of workshops, readings, and academic panels. In the last edition, for example, we organized an exhibition in the Atelierhaus together with the Academy’s Austrian Student Union (ÖH). We focus on examining everything related to sexuality, identity, body, and politics through a pornographic lens.

You mentioned your film projects at the beginning – the thesis project Fudliaks! and Musings of a Mechatronic Mistress. What do you focus on in your own filmmaking?

Fudliaks! was my very first independent film project I believe that every person generally pursues an agenda, and it was important to me to humorously convey a message about how to kickstart a queer revolution. Because I would love to see that happen. I envisioned a future scenario of how that could happen. In the film, several beings are examined in a kind of laboratory setting, and it’s not entirely clear whether they’re an unknown species or perhaps even aliens. These small creatures, the Fudliaks, only have one function, namely they can “queer” humans. In the end, what happens in every good movie happens: everything escalates and leads to a queer, lustful and also explicit explosion.

Musings was a larger EU project, a short documentary about sex robots. I was invited to direct and explore the question of whether ethical guidelines are needed for sex robots and what these robots actually mean for society and for women in particular. Because it was an EU project, I had the opportunity to interview the crème de la crème of international sex tech experts, such as Dr. Katta Spiel, who researches queer sex robotics at the Vienna University of Technology, Johannes Grenzfurthner, who, besides his involvement in the artist collective monochrome, also organizes the festival Arse Elektronika around sex and technology, or Kate Devlin, the expert on sex robots. The film was shot from the perspective of Tiffany, a sex robot that has come to life, who talks to the experts about why she looks the way she does, who her creators are, but also asks questions about data security and queerness in sex technology.

Your artistic work naturally often involves collaborations, including with Offerus Ablinger, who was also once a scholarship holder in the Studio Program. What exactly does this collaboration look like?

Offerus is primarily a painter who has also turned to performance art. We share a deep friendship and engage in a strong exchange of ideas. Body politics and identity are the main topics that bind us together. We both have a feminist perspective, focusing heavily on queerness, the positioning of queer themes in society, and making them visible to mainstream society. Together, we have already developed several performances. Currently, we’re taking a short break from performing, but we never completely lose touch. Instead, we often participate in each other’s projects; for example, Offerus has worked as an art director on my films, or he provides feedback on the script. I have often posed as a model for his work, which focuses on transhumanism and representations of masculinity.

You just returned from Berlin, where you gave a performance at the Volksbühne. What was that project about?

The Volksbühne in Berlin hosted a presentation of the book Fragile Fäden. Perspektiven auf Beziehungsweisen im Kapitalismus [Fragile Threads: Perspectives on Relationships in Capitalism], for which I wrote a chapter during my time here in the Studio. I wrote about the topics of DIY films and DIY pornography, attempting to outline what they entail, their advantages, how one can make films in an anti-capitalist way, especially when there isn’t huge funding, as well as about temporary autonomous zones as a place of creation and counterculture. The book presentation had a performative character. It was a big mishmash of short lectures, performances and readings on the topics of relationships in relation to capitalism, the climate crisis, representations of masculinity, hypermasculinity and fatphobia. In my essay, I explored how these themes manifest in pornographic filmmaking. Based on the pieces in the book, I created a performance entitled Fuck Yeah! First Manifesto of Pornosity. Building on my article in the publication, as well as on the TEDx talk “How Good Porn Can Save the Planet,” which I once gave on pornography, sexuality, and sustainability, the performance revolved around a guerrilla party for better pornosity on the planet, reading its first manifesto. In a very humorous, slightly militant manner, I discuss what it means to make ethical, fair porn. Why do we need to think about it? Because porn, just like any other films, is work that requires the consideration of working conditions and fair compensation for all involved. Moreover, there’s also the question of where the material comes from, what happens to it, how transparency can be created, and how we can take better care of each other in this regard.

As one can tell, you’ve been very busy in the past year. What’s coming up next?

Musings of a Mechatronic Mistress was a kind of learning experience for the project I’m currently working on, my first feature-length documentary, Existential Detective. It focuses on the queer activist from Athens Menelas Siafakas, who runs the Porn Film Festival there, while also producing gay porn alternatives, making him only the second person in the whole of Greece to ever make gay porn. When we first talked about it, I found it quite peculiar for a country whose history feels so homoerotically charged for me. But I believe Greece is still a very conservative society that is heavily influenced by religion and morality, and the economic and refugee crises have left significant marks. That’s why his activism there is truly necessary. That’s what we’re talking about. Pornography is usually just a conduit, opening up discussions on many other topics; it’s always a reflection of society. Porn is political, bodies are political, and through them, you can see what’s happening in a society. Initial research shoots have already been completed, but currently, the focus is more on figuring out how to turn the idea into a real documentary film that also fills 90 minutes. I’m really enjoying immersing myself in this project and giving it artistically valuable aesthetics.