Writing Desire

Writing Desire is about the rapport between words and body and the creation of desire. The fast-paced video links the writing of romantic desire by means of electronic communication technologies to the increasing disembodiment of sexuality and commercialized gender relations. The booming bride market emerges as a site where the virtual and the physical exchange of bodies converge. The video examines the different subjectivities produced through this exchange in both the industrial world and in post-socialist and Southeast Asian countries and looks at their respective desires.

Electronic communication technologies challenge the boundaries between private fantasy and the public sphere. In this compressed electronic space, the notion of the self undergoes transformations that also affect questions of boundaries, gender, and sexual relations. Writing Desire links the creation of romantic desire through writing to the production of desire in consumer culture.

The bride market in general, and the virgin market in particular, are evidence of the capitalisation on sexual relation on the Internet. russian.bride.com, tigerlilies.com, and blossoms.com are among the many sites which advertise large numbers of women from the former Soviet Union and the Philippines to the global male community.

In their digital representation, the female bodies get reduced to a flat minimum of visual and textual information, and the digitized on-line videos technologizes the bodies even further. The slave of the colonial era is transformed into a post-Fordist robot. In a high-tech guise the sites draw on a historical narration of the female racialized body as an object of desire that await to be conquered. So the global trade with humans is accelerating through the Internet, resources are almost inexhaustible, and a lot of these enterprises are syndicated operations.

However, through the new possibilities of net.cast video clips, women are also able to voice their desires, and by doing so, they resist their total sellout. As subjects with desires they can no longer be reduced to mere objects of desire. This video is an attempt to articulate different writing positions and their respective desires. In Mexico City, the virtual artist Maris Bustamante, who was tired of the local machismo, recently found an American husband via the Internet. For her, the new media opened greater possibilities to reformulate expectations and set her desires into motion.

The Internet creates different subjectivities in the industrial and the developing worlds. But meanwhile, in metropolitan centers in the Philippines, one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, every neighborhood has Internet cafes and they are always crowded with young people. Slum girls have access to the Internet there. However, the usage may have a different purpose in such a location. Writing Desire goes beyond simply lamenting a lack of access and attempts to differentiate female desires in the representation of virtual culture. (source:https://www.geobodies.org)