On the Origins of the 21st Century or the Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography

Through five curated sections, this cluster of exhibitions examines the role of intimacy, gender, and sexuality through visual cultures in the context of political regime changes in Europe from the 1980s until today. Artworks that engage with the Fall of the Berlin Wall and its consequences shed light on the emergence of a power vacuum, in a moment often referred to as the

end of history, and the struggles emerging within new hegemonies informed by gender and sexuality. The title references Jean-Luc Godard’s film Origins of the 21st Century, which anticipates developments in visual culture that synthesise violence and the erotic into an era of the “hardcore” at the turn of the millennium – a time when uncensored images increasingly begin to enable and establish new political spaces. The exhibition seeks the origins of this hardcore visual culture not in cinema, but in video and television media, locating them as the dominant tools of discourse and power in a then-accelerating postmodernity.