Tricks for Kicks – now out

Tricks for Kicks cover (Xcite Books)

You might remember Fulani had a short story, ‘Filthy White Dress’, that appeared as part of the Making Her Pay ebook from Xcite – this was a short five-story collection. ‘Filthy White Dress’ was slightly unusual in terms of erotica because it was inspired by ‘Nu Fetish’, something we’ve previously blogged about here – and maybe a little, too, by some themes from French experimental writers such as Robbe-Grillet, who deliberately set out (in Project for a Revolution in New York, for example) to associate colours with particular cultural meanings. If you’re into experimental literature, Project for a Revolution in New York is kind of interesting because it includes a huge number of hardcore torture scenes of a nature that  most erotica publishers these days wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, or any other implement.

But we digress.

The same story is also now out as part of the longer Tricks For Kicks: Sex with Rewards 20-story Xcite collection, edited by Elizabeth Coldwell.

Stories by: Veronica Wilde, Mary Borsellino, Fulani, Victoria Blisse, Maxim Jakubowski, Catelyn Cash, Landon Dixon, Tabitha Rayne, Heidi Champa, Dominic Santi, Kay Jaybee, Kathleen Tudor, Marleen Yong, Giselle Renarde, Cecilia Duvalle, Alanna Appleton, Cynthia Lucas, Sommer Marsden, Scarlett Blue and Elizabeth Coldwell – 224 pages all told. Available as hard copy at £7.99 or as an epub format at £6.49.

In short, what you’ve got in this collection is 20 pieces by a bunch of the most talented and innovative erotica writers you can hope to find.

If you want a sneak peek at Fulani’s story, one was included in a previous post on this blog.

Thinking about Nu Fetish

Just a quick note: Fulani’s non-fiction thinkpiece about fetish – specifically about Christopher Cumingham’s Nu Fetish, hence the title ‘What’s Nu?’ – is just out in Erotic Review (dated 24 March 2012).

For those who haven’t been keeping up, Erotic Review is no longer a paid-for electronic magazine but a free website with a whole load of insightful comment on everything from burlesque to obscenity and internet dating to HIV – plus some pretty neat fiction.

Oh, and there’s a long and slightly literary post over at his other blog, Fulanismut, about how erotica’s suddenly become a major publishing genre in its own right.

Pole-dancing robots!

This must be crossover territory between Nu Fetish, gynoids and cybersex – pole-dancing robots.

The CeBIT tech fair in Hanover, Germany, running until 10 March, features a pair of robot pole dancers made from old car parts, along with a robot DJ who plays the music they gyrate to. The idea came from Julian Hangschlit and the robots were designed by British robot-maker-cum-artist Giles Walker, are driven by old car motors and their moves are controlled by computer via wireless technology.

Pics and more info: Physorg.com or Rawstory.com (they have the same stuff) – and more pics and a short video at Walker’s website (explore the other parts of his website for similarly strange robots including a cyber-beggar (complete with cyber-dog), robot priest and, for those who are knowledgeable about UK culture and get the reference, a pair of cyber-chavs.

It turns out the robots weren’t made especially for this exhibition – they previously appeared a couple of years ago in a Mutate Britain exhibition in London (here’s a short Vimeo clip and a YouTube clip). But their CeBIT appearance has certainly attracted a lot of attention.

You don’t see the robot pole-dancers swinging around their poles, climbing them or performing acrobatics – but a quick inspection of YouTube indicates there are already plenty of dancing robots, climbing robots, and of course the notorious Japanese gynoids (Aiko, Actroid, EveR-1, Meinu and others). So there will probably be some performing next year, then… and the year after, in a ‘gentleman’s club’ near you…

Nu fetish, anyone?

Discovered through a random accident: Nu Fetish.

Urban dictionary says: ‘An adult genre coined by Directer/Producer Christopher Cumingham, and first seen in his GirlsIMetAt.com project in early 2010. Nu Fetish is a unique and rather young genre of erotica, which snowballed into a form that is defined more by its contributors/creators than by its consumers. It is a form of amateur pornographic film which creatively cycles around the individual’s desire. Often it is created by women, with some exceptions (e.g. Christopher Cumingham), and it has an emancipatory and often artistic quality to it, as the entire production is usually done by one person. Female collaborations within the Nu Fetish scene have been done as well. Who exactly consumes Nu Fetish on the net, is still an unclear demographic as very little information is available. It is assumed that creative people are interested in this form of erotica.’

There’s not a lot of public info about Christopher Cumingham apart from his profile on Vimeo, which says: ‘i produce and direct an individual style of pornographic film. My ever-closer forays into a filmic style that scathes close to the bone of personality in a branch that doesn’t normally go much further than the superficial surface of sexuality have brought me upon a playground of fun experimentation and have opened up new exiting possibilities for the erotic film genre.’ And he has a profile on TED, which says: ‘The porn world is full of pimps and people who exploit girls. I know that sometimes it feels that I am walking on a wire above a quagmire of shit, but I have never fallen in. Instead I have fallen into another world, the one where art, sex and money meet. The one where it is much less clear who is doing the exploiting.’

Christopher Cumingham has his own website at christophercumingham.com; there’s a Vimeo page for his stuff at vimeo.com/gim; and he has the site mentioned above, girlsimetat.com. If you want more, by other people, you’re going to have to look for it yourself – let us know what you find!

The Miami Times has a short article about it, though it doesn’t go much beyond the stuff you’ll see on the above links.

So what’s interesting about this? It seems to be pretty much home made, surreal, and on the whole done by and for the people who appear in the (usually short) videos, possibly as some form of self-exploration. It often speaks to fetishes that seem quite outside the general realm of bondage, leather, whips, or more hardcore-yet-somehow-conventional interests. It seems to cast back to the broader, more psychoanalytic sense of fetish as sexual arousal brought about by an object or situation, without any particular assumptions about what the object or situation might be. It seems to poke at the subconscious in unpredictable ways. And it’s probably going to be huge six months from now.

Go have a look. See what you think.