The "Erotic lives of women" project:

INTRODUCTION

Talking with other women about erotic feelings is a chance to learn more about them and thus about ourselves, to experience different worlds and to be able to share them. Believe it or not this subject is still very difficult to talk about, even amongst girlfriends. It belongs to this sphere of privacy you usually do not dare to enter without invitation.

Texts with photographs are easier to understand and give more possibilities of imagination. Of course, this levers the state of anonymitiy people usually want to stay in concerning their most private feelings and might frighten the women we asked for an interview. So, initially we had the idea to mix the photographs and the texts so that nobody would know which text belongs to which woman.

Soon we realized that this would not be a decent presentation. People want to know which belongs to which - and have the right to know in a way. Surprisingly women did not bother too much once they had decided to talk. The most difficult step for them was the decision to do it. We always talked about the sake of the project for other women. This was one of the drives to work at it: to help to be able to be more open with oneself and one another.

There was a strong effect on us and the women concerned once we had started to work together. The project made us change, especially Linda and me of course, dealing with it all the time. Experiencing so many different experiences we opened up to the different worlds, lost our fear and original shyness. Thus women gave us even more confidence and support.

We do not want to hide the severe difficulties and even despair. The first problem we only found out about one year after we started the project is the word „erotic“ itself. Depending on culture, nation and education it has such different meanings, is not everywhere known at all. In Kenia, although being educated in the English language, even women who graduated at Highschool did not know it. In Northamerica it has a more sexual, pornographic association, whereas in Germany it is connected with cultural and intellectual qualities. So, we could not trust our title. We had to fix a certain definition and present this as the given one. „The word ‘erotic’ relates to feelings of your body which arouse you, make you feel your sexual organs and/or sensual feelings in your body“.

We then want photograph and text being in harmony. This is not easy. Besides, there should be consistency of the text in order to make the reader and spectator feel comfortable. Meeting so many different worlds and attitudes this was nearly impossible to reach, moreover having to deal with translations. So, we dropped a lot of interviews.

There was this conflict between documentary and artwork in general. We were working between those two worlds, accepting that the reader and spectator and listener should have the right to hear the woman. Besides, we are artists and want to express our artistic skills as well as our subjective personality. This is what makes us keep going. We compromised the way you can see it here.

We are very grateful to the women to have given us so much trust and faith and confidence and their time and energy and hope that we can reward them with the success of our project.

How our project evolvedthe project
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