Sexkino Roland, Kino Roland is closing down. It has been a mediating institution within the city, one that modulates and regulates the contemporary sexual subject through its semiotic-technical government. Its bricks, neon signs and mural paintings have been in charge of reproducing the biopolitical norm of the heteronormative patriarchy, inducing sexual excitement in the male viewers while unveiling the disobedient nature of sexual desires.
In search of possible venues for the next swiss national exhibition Nexpo, we explore places of change and seek the new in the existing. The void of Sexkino Roland marks a point of change whilst opening itself up for various speculations and potentialities. The former cinema will be put to an investigation. For one last time, we invite you to inhabit the void of Sexkino Roland with us. The porn theater delimitates a territory under the exclusive dominion of the male subject.
Women are notoriously absent, appearing only on screen or on the mural representations of lesbian intercourse via the male gaze and as pleasure giving devices. The symbolic representations of patriarchal power in heterosexual pleasure have led feminists such as Andrea Dworking to reject pornography as a whole practice, having identified a clear link between extreme sexual violence against women and the consumption of pornography.
Other feminist figures identify a radical liberating potential within porn. It has been one of the visible architectural devices of the pharmacopornographic regime within public space. Its closing down might just signify a broader retreat of porn consumption to the domestic and the digital space. However, what happens in the dark room might have been more complex than watching and wanking.
Random encounters between men seeking for pleasure emerged out of the must of sharing a physical space to watch porn. Those spaces have fostered cross-class and mixed-race social contacts in the shape of aromantic intimacy. The complex social network around them has stabilized different communities while maintaining their heterogeneity. It might not be coincidental that the closing down of Sexkino Roland overlaps with a broader, ongoing process of gentrification at work in Langstrasse.
