The Seattle Erotic Art Festival encourages you to not only view art, but to embody art through conversation, education, and action. Over the course of three days, we’ll offer numerous conversations and lectures on a range of topics related to art, sexuality, identity, and/or eroticism. Take a gander at our options; all of these wonderful classes are included in the price of your festival ticket.
Eroticism in Art and Media in the Time of #MeToo – Sunday, April 28 at 12:30pm – Main Stage
A panel discussion that will explore questions such as: What is Erotica/Eroticism? How has the #MeToo movement impacted the way you create or consume erotic images? What are some ways that artists and art lovers can engage authentically in sexual activism?
Panelists:
Randy Ford (she/her they/them) is a Seattle-born Queer Black Non binary Trans Femme choreographer, dancer, actor, and curator. She has been recognized on the City Arts Magazine’s 2018 Future’s List as an artist to watch and is a 2016 SeattleDances DanceCrush for Powerful Performance. When she’s not on stage she teaches MixxedFit at the Northwest African American Museum and is a teaching artist with ArtsCorps.
Vivek is a teacher, writer, and activist. His current book-in-progress explores the representations, performances, and experiences of desire located in a range of cultural identities, with attention to the intersections of erotic and spiritual desires, the desire for community, and the embodied desire for justice.
Ebony Smith is the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Community Engagement Manager at Girl Scouts of Western Washington. Prior to joining GSWW Ebony was a Women’s Advocate at New Beginnings For Battered Women and Their Children. While there, she led the crisis line and facilitated support groups, helping to empower and change the lives of victims and survivors of domestic violence. A graduate from The Evergreen State College, Ebony holds a degree in Social Psychology and is passionate about helping to create pathways for people of color to connect, heal and reach their highest potential! She is a mother, wife, educator, organizer, and connector. When not hard at work, she enjoys dancing, spending time with her husband, children and grandchildren, and traveling.
Smitty Buckler is an amalgamation of grey area politicized identities. They express themselves through the intersections of being an artist, organizer, writer, performer, dancer, coder, researcher, healer, and advocate. They have been creating opportunities for qtpoc spectrum artists since 2005 through the Collective of Geniuses (CoG). CoG is now working to bridge the gap between art as social change and essential healing tools with a project called Rad Care. Their current arts projects include Oratio Imperata: a podcast amplifying sex worker voices, talking about sex and identity through puppets or movement performances on stage, making weird puppet porn or doing direct health service work in their communities mostly around trans identities, sex workers and the HIV epidemic. Enthusiasts of Smitty say among their other qualities, one is phlebotomizing the patriarchy of all its evil blood, replacing it with liquid glitter. This is apparent in their art and the fierceness they bring to intersectional activism. More about Smitty can be found at SmittyBuckler.com.
Visual Art Jurors Panel – Sunday, April 27 at 2:00pm – Main Stage
Join Festival Director, Sophia Iannicelli and the SEAF 2019 Visual Art Jury to discuss the art selection process. Jurors will share thoughts on a few works of art that brought up interesting conversations. Bring your questions for the jurors about the exhibition. The jurors will continue the discussion on an art tour at 3pm.
Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble: Witches As Symbols of Sexual Agency – Cancelled –
This lecture will discuss the visual history of witches and how common attributes of witches often relate to female power and the vilification of their sexuality. We will look at how this imagery changes as the dominant ideologies around sex change through time, including how women are reclaiming the identity of the witch as a way to express their own sexual agency.
Shayla M. Alarie is an historian, teacher, writer and researcher. She has worked extensively in galleries and in higher education with a passion for teaching and for helping artists and art historians refine their craft and further their careers. Alarie holds an MA in art history and is currently an adjunct professor at Seattle University and Olympic College.
Talking Dirty – Friday, April 26 at 10:00pm – Literary Lair
Join Lala Lipsy for collaborative perversion! Being good at sexy talk mostly means that you have the courage and confidence to speak up. Practice your dirty talk skills by making up sexy stories in a group setting with brainstormed topics and story building activities. (Verbal activities, that is.) La Shonda will advice and encouragement on tone, volume, and delivery. Come prepared to use your voice.
Building Intimate Charge Consensually – Saturday, April 27 at 12:30pm – Literary Lair
There’s a lot on the line when you start building intimate connection, especially in the post #metoo era. Empathy and discussion are at the core of the sultry art of building consensual intimate charge. What would be possible between us if we thought of consent as a subjective experience of agreement instead of a signature on a legal document? How could we craft intimacy by better asking for what we want and meeting everyone’s needs?
Victor Salmon: Intersectional mixed-race feminist. Queer relationship anarchist. Educator. Consultant. Volunteer. Mediator. MVK director at large and Accountability Subcommittee member. Restorative justice and accountability blogger. Vancouver Consent Crew Facilitator. Podcast host for Intimate Interactions.
Defy Desublimation! – Saturday, April 27 at 2:30pm – Literary Lair
Erotic energy is vital life energy that fuels all creativity and consciousness. Herbert Marcuse coined the term “repressive desublimation” to describe how the erotic is narrowly reduced to sex in modern society. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” how can we make visible and claim or reclaim the profundity, power, and mystery of the erotic that informs and infuses multiple arenas of our life, including our work, our sense of community, our relationship to nature and the non-human, our activism, and much more? Join us for scintillating conversation, writing invitations, and art making as we reanimate the exquisite corpse of modern life!
Maureen is an evolutionary ecologist, visual artist, facilitator, and activist. Her work focuses on the continuity and continuously evolving relationships among expressions of human creativity and the deep, erotic imagination of nature.
Vivek is a teacher, writer, and activist. His current book-in-progress explores the representations, performances, and experiences of desire located in a range of cultural identities, with attention to the intersections of erotic and spiritual desires, the desire for community, and the embodied desire for justice.
Raising Kids Without Sexual Shame – Saturday, April 27 at 4:30pm – Literary Lair
Raising Kids Without Sexual Shame is a project started in 2009 by Nekole Shapiro and Allena Gabosch. It was born out of the intersection between Nekole’s awareness that sexual shame hinders birth and parenting and Allena’s life long mission to eradicate sexual shame from the planet. With over 50 years of combined experience pushing edges for the purpose of healing and community building, these two created the perfect team to guide numerous discussions on the topic of how to talk to our kids about sex.
For 5 years they met once a month in Seattle with anyone willing to show up to have a discussion on how to raise children without sexual shame. Today, their work carries on via the Raising Kids Without Sexual Shame Facebook page and through events such as this, wherein communities host panels and discussions on the topic of how to Raise Kids Without Sexual Shame. We look forward to learning more from each other every day.
Nekole Shapiro helps you dive into your body to find your own best expert for your own best life. With her roots firmly in Tantra, she weaves her lifetime of body-work experience together with her Columbia University pre-medical and cultural anthropology studies to create ground breaking education experiences for parents, birth pros, sex educators, activists and countless others searching to bring the human back to humanity. Her “almost indescribable” approach is catching on and changing lives!
Solo Yet Unbounded: Venturing forth when the world tells you it’s not safe – Sunday, April 28 at 2:30pm – Literary Lair
As a young woman with a penchant for travel, wilderness, and adventure, I am often asked how safe I feel venturing alone to the mountains, to foreign countries, or even just for an evening run. Despite risks — whether real or perceived — I find that with solid preparation, a little practice, and some intuition, my solo adventures are satisfying and fulfilling.
In this conversation, we will explore what it means to operate in a world that does not automatically grant us physical or psychological safety, and how we may still find solo adventure enjoyable and rewarding. What is required to keep ourselves safe without sacrificing our desires to see the world and climb those mountains? I welcome all people to share their opinions and experiences, and I encourage you to get out for a hike!
Olivia strives to live deeply and fully, and she is passionate about sucking out all the marrow of life. When not saving the world with science and sustainable business (or so she likes to think), Olivia is running trails, hiking mountains, and traveling the world, sometimes in complete solitude. Her solo ventures include traipsing the cliffs of Italy, working on a remote island in Alaska, and standing at the edge of Mount St. Helens’ crater. An honest Seattleite, Olivia also savors a rainy day and can be overheard ordering her latte in a “for here” cup. Olivia is completing a Master of Science degree while working as a strategy analyst in Seattle, and she absolutely loves volunteering at SEAF every year!
This Heart Holds Many – Sunday, April 28 at 12:30pm – Literary Lair
As children, many of us were asked by our mother to do the dishes. Perhaps some of us would need to be asked more than once. Koe Creation would get asked three times, by three different mothers. Crowded parent teacher conferences, queer youth summer camp, and parental adoptions over potluck dinner were typical of Koe’s otherwise divergent upbringing raised in a queer polyamorous family. Still: all families know conflict, and all hearts know struggle, no matter how loved. Whilst in the spotlight as a “poster child” for the alternative Seattle community, Koe yearned for a realization of themself beyond the “shadow of their tribe.” This drive for a singular identity to navigate a world of collective relationships led Koe to leave the alt-Seattle scene behind them—first for the vivacious beaches of Hawai’i, and later for the couches of San Francisco—to find the self that no one person, or even one family, could make for them. This Heart Holds Many is a testament of transformative, communal love, as told by an educator and lifelong learner who has dedicated their life to helping others grasp their extraordinary love.
Koe Creation has one of the most unique life stories you’ve ever heard, guaranteed. Growing up in a sex-positive, polyamorous family in Seattle, Washington, Koe learned transparent, non-violent communication, age-appropriate discourse, and sex-positive empowerment at a young age. Teaching sex education and relationship skills across the USA since they were a teenager, Koe now has a decade of expertise at being a “professional pervert.” Koe is a frequent cohost of the Polyamory Weekly podcast and presents at conferences all over the country.
Se what other delights the festival schedule holds for you!