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Sex
Worker Media Library
Opening
Reception
at Center for Sex & Culture
Jan 31st, 2010 7 PM
Hosted by Annie Sprinkle,
Scarlot Harlot and Carol Queen
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Event: Carol
Leigh (AKA Scarlot Harlot) has just finished her grant project in
collaboration with the Center for Sex and Culture. The Sex Worker
Media Library is a searchable database of 20 years of sex worker,
LGBT and other activist and arts interviews, performances and other
video recordings, funded by the Creative Work Fund.
Date and Time: Sunday, January 31st, at 7PM
Location: Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103
415-255-1155
Website: http://www.sexworkermedialibrary.org/
"The Creative Work Fund's awards illustrate the great spirit
and ingenuity that thrives in the Bay Area's arts community,"
comments the Fund's director, Frances Phillips. "The media and
performing arts awardees who have partnered with local nonprofits
will push artistic boundaries, benefit social and medical services,
and reflect the vibrancy and vitality of the Bay Area.
Grants are highly competitive and recommended to the Fund by prestigious
committees of panelists. Among the honored recipients are media and
performance artist Carol Leigh in collaboration with the Center for
Sex and Culture on "Art, Advocacy and Identity." The project
makes innovative use of a pathfinder-based delivery system to organize
digital materials that document the stories, artistic expressions,
history, cultural roles, and legal and social positions of sex workers
internationally.
Carol Leigh has been an activist and an artist in the Bay Area for
almost thirty years. Since the late seventies, she has written and
performed political satire as "Scarlot Harlot," based on
her experience as a sex worker. Leigh taught digital video production
at the International Center for Digital Art, Center for Electronic
Arts and other schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a long-time
activist in the sex workers' rights movement in the U.S. and internationally--in
fact, she coined the term "sex work" in the late 70s. She
curates and directs the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival.
She is webmistress of the BAYSWAN website, which features the most
extensive information about sex workers' rights and issues on the
web. She was seated on the San Francisco Board of Supervisor's Task
Force on Prostitution representing San Francisco's Commission on the
Status of Women. For the past decade Leigh has traveled to U.S. and
international conferences, documenting the sex workers’ rights
movement around the globe. Unrepentant Whore: The Collected Work of
Scarlot Harlot was published by Last Gasp in March, 2004. Further
information about Carol Leigh is available at www.unrepentantwhore.com.
Carol Queen, Ph.D., CSC’s founding director, is a much published,
award-winning writer about sexual cultural issues. Her doctoral program
in sexology gave her an abiding respect for the hard-to-preserve materials
that document especially marginalized sexual cultures and individuals.
Co-founder, Dr. Robert Morgan Lawrence, Ed.D. has 25 years of experience
in the field of human sexuality. He has a doctorate of education in
human sexuality. As a publicly available expert he is a sex industry
consultant, educator and (academic) author. He lectures extensively
about human sexuality and health. Together Carol and Robert teach,
write, and produce sex education events and materials.
The Center for Sex and Culture maintains a rare collection of publications,
private archives, art and artifacts, documenting the nexus of sex
and culture. The ambiance of this library is uniquely conducive to
an understanding of the cultural context that CSC makes available
to scholars and interested laypeople. The mission of the Center for
Sex and Culture is to provide non-judgmental, sex-positive sexuality
education and support to diverse populations by means of classes,
workshops, cultural events such as readings, art shows, and performances,
social gatherings, and practical skills-building events; to maintain
and house these events and to staff and support this learning environment.
Further information about the Center for Sex and Culture is available
at www.sexandculture.org.
Responding to several years of declining
support for artists and new art works, The Columbia Foundation, Evelyn
and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Miriam and Peter Haas Fund, and Walter
and Elise Haas Fund launched the Creative Work Fund in September 1994.
Since its inception, the Fund has awarded $6.7 million in grants for
collaborations between artists and organizations to create new art
works. For more information about The Creative Work Fund, please call
415.398.4474 or visit The Creative Work Fund's website at www.creativeworkfund.org.
Sex Worker Art
Auction
To give it
a big send-off and further support the project and CSC, we're throwing
a party complete with a Sex Worker Artist Auction. We're seeking
artworks by current and former sex workers to be donated for this
auction. (Unlike Nude Aid and other CSC art events, art donated
for this auction need not be erotic, though if it is, great!) If
you can contribute something, please email carol@carolqueen.com
with ART AUCTION in the subject line. Thanks!! Let us know if you
have any questions. Your donations to CSC are tax-deductible to
the extent allowed by law. (If your artwork is valued at over $5000
it will probably require an independent appraisal for you to be
able to take a 5K+ deduction.)
http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid=219944882902
