As a gift for Leila Spilman's birthday, Torbjørn Rødland photographed her and her friends wearing clothing Spilman made under her own unestablished label LSCO. Also included are a Thom Browne jacket and Saint Laurent dress.
There’s no right way to do it. It’s silly to enforce rules when it comes to making an object whose purpose is to be destroyed. The destruction can only be intuitive. However, it is possible to achieve a particular style, an approach to the act, learned criterion through ritualistic behavior. This is about crushing.
On any given day I will have one that I made myself, one that I bought from the store, and one that was sent to me by a member. Acknowledgment of origin allows for different approaches to the chosen one. Those that I author I have more sentiment for, the slaughter is tentative. The ones I buy are dry and lack pliability, obviously not made with love. The ones that are gifted to me, I feel responsible to ravage in a way that I normally would not, oftentimes prematurely. In all cases, deliberate, but not necessarily aggressive, there’s softness. This is about deflation.
Intimately destroying something meant to be shared could be considered a selfish act, wasteful even. I assure you, it is not. Object elimination using ‘body as medium’ widens the audience. The body simultaneously inflicts fantasized, celebratory pain on an item [usually consumed] while alleviating the audience’s sexual desires. This is about flattening.
Since the action is sudden and brief, teasing [by this I mean hovering and shaking] is key. The object will lay directly on a surface, nothing obstructing skin to skin contact, this allows for a secure initial embrace. Composition is important, multiple points-of-view should be considered and movement is frequent. Bouncing, crumbling, smearing, and wiping are all options but not mandatory. Though, there is indisputable effort of disintegration. Be prepared to dispose of your palette, laundering is improbable. This is about obliterating.
Chocolate is out of the question. Cutthroat I know, but it’s not about taste. Newton divided the spectrum into seven colors, use those, minus Red. Cupped, layered, sheets, conical, most notably round, like the sun and the moon, size and shape are symbolic. I guarantee the more height the more explosive beneath strength. Their ancestors, Vikings, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, were flat and folded to begin with. This is about collapsing.
The more superficially attractive the surface, the stronger the attachment from the audience, which results in amplified enjoyment for all. Add to the veneer, enhance with piped borders. Open star, closed star, rosettes, drop flower, french, petal. Your hand should remain visible, this is not about perfection. Inspiration for costuming of your own, can be found in the decor. I enjoy metallics, tightness, mesh, stretching, and minimal lines. This is about pounding.
Timing the event is where it gets tricky, it is everything. I cannot decide, for another, when it is the right time. My advice would be to have an honest method, each time could be the first time or last time. Best not to make assumptions: what you want to happen, will not happen. Confidence in the performed gesture can spawn from habituating a practice but do not ignore tenderness. This is a ceremony, vanity and novelty cannot be present. This is about pulverization.
It is a financially comprising routine, unquantifiable economically because consummation points are scattered and unknown. Even for the most accomplished, it cannot be considered financially enriching as the premium members commissioning the viewing are limited and the unnamed voyeurs are untraced [perhaps too oppressed to monetarily admit to their needs]. Art objects are expensive because they’re fetishized, easily commodifiable. What I offer is joy in anticipation, pricing varies. This is about grinding.
The crossover audience enters when the entertainer converts regulars to fetishists. The regular enjoys the performer in such a way that any act carried out can expect arousal in response. At this moment, finding pleasure in pleasing happens simultaneously between onlooker and entertainer. Perversions aren’t just born, they can be made. This is about compression.
I challenge the trope of villain with the following: I am an alleviator. I have the ability to assuage [what those without fetish may see as a threat] by providing relief to those who have displaced desires. I am an outlet for the wayward appetites. Humans don’t view consuming food as destroying, it is seen as nourishment. I present myself as the special-purpose nourisher. This is about dismantling.
The aftermath is not apart of the show but it is apart of the process. It’s something like sex, be sure to cleanse. This is your space to be alone with the remains of your work. The smell is something only you will experience, relish in it. Granulated sugar makes your skin supple, this is your time for satisfaction. Yes, it is about crushing, it is also about absorbing.
I’m an artist, my work is sex, this is my cake period.
Now, drawing inspiration from Sierra Domino and Marlon Riggs, Mooney teamed up to produce a personal project with photographer Eric Johnson— the legend responsible for shooting Lauryn Hill's only album cover— to create mind-altering photos, a visual projection of the place he's at with his creative thought process today.
Expanding their media brand, building editorial content and hosting creative events, Salty seeks to offer the world a much-needed arena that is able to bring women, trans, and nonbinary voices together and talk about sex without commercial censorship, bias, or straight white guys. We spoke to the Salty team about their tough start— being banned by MailChimp— and how they see this style of media making your sex so, so much saltier.
I feel like there so many media spaces that are just pretending to be unbiased and open, like yours is, but there's a barrier in being able to trust what they're saying about sex, especially towards women. And as a women, it's hard to find anyone talking about sex unless it’s in the context of politics, but there's not always the substance behind that sentiment with so much of the feminist message having become commercialied. And then there's shit like Cosmo— and we end up with either the stereotypical "Angry Feminist" or just plain sexism.
I’m not afraid of being the "Mad Feminist". But I want to make sure this is a place where we celebrate that concept and don't condemn. Instead of using our energy saying, “you’re doing the wrong thing”, we just find the people doing the right thing and focus on featuring that.
And what about allowing men to enter the conversation?
It’s funny because I don't really care if men have an opinion in the Salty space at all. My sister in law asked if this was a place where men can be educated on feminism, and I responded that it wasn’t. I frankly don't have the time. There’s so much rage-bait, we know how infuriating it is to be a woman having sex today. Can we just have a space that talks about it? It’s the kind of conversation that you would have with your girlfriends, on modern dating and relationships. We’re not going to be an educational platform because as soon as you start to talk about Feminist Sex, people want to do panels and talks. It becomes very granola, and Salty is sexy and fun. It's kind of part Playboy, part Cosmo— but minus all the bullshit.
You're unifying without even trying to be unifying— because we're are all able to understand such a relateable subject.
I'm not here for us to be picking each other apart, we all have to help each other. There is no hidden agenda, we’re not trying to sell you something in the background. How the fuck we're gonna make any money, I'm not sure yet— but I know the brands will come.
Well lifestyle products are a good way to make money, so you can work with vibrators and sex toy companies?
I don't really know if we want to go down that route. Once you do that you become “the sex toy space”, and it's like, no— sex is relationships, health, working out, lifestyle, communication. It's so many other things. I really see Salty becoming bigger than that so there’s a long term goal, and gain here. Inclusivity and intersectionality has to be baked into the brand because these larger brands are too big to pivot, the culture there is so exclusionary. These kind of voices have to come from the outside like you have to be an independent media brand in order to include people in the way they want.
Yeah, the message is much more believable when it comes from independent publications, rather than these big corporate ones, because, as we discussed before— there is always a hidden agenda. Or it is run by bros.
So what’s next? Or I guess, what's now?
We have to get everything up and running— we started with the newsletter, and that's out this month and will be going every month. Then we’re doing a lot of events, starting with a panel discussion on “circumventing censorship”. It's basically tips and tricks for sex positive activists marketing brands and sex workers on getting their word out. There are just so many ways that women and activists can’t speak about sex online.
Are you going to be constantly creating content on a site?
Yeah, there’s a website. All the content that goes on the newsletter is going to live on the site.
So it is like an actual print magazine, rather than an online platform, in regards to the content not going up every day.
Yeah, I took a lot of the traditional elements of a magazine and the difference is it's just digital. This year is just about small iterations of bigger events we want to do next year. For example, Amplify Fest which would be an all-women music festival. This year we’ll do monthly nights where we have female performers. We’ll do pop up shops once in a while so when we go to do Fem Con in year it’ll be seamless.
What if men want to come to the events?
Men are welcome to attend but there voice doesn't have a space. We welcome them to subscribe but they can’t contribute. They have enough spaces.
