Sexy Freaks
Johanna Hedva

An afternoon of readings, discussion, and film screenings that languish in the themes of erotics, divinity, abjection, and monstrosity.
Starting from our writing and choreographic practices, we propose close readings of authors and artists who approach themes of embodiment and authorship as sites of loss, negativity, disjunction, and abjection. We will talk about consumption, intercourse with those beyond grave, disfiguration, and oozing glands as formulations of the problem that a body is—a site of resistance and its failures, but also where desire joyfully comes to rot. There’s a distance to one’s own experience that we’re interested in and that the authors and artists we will focus on also explore (Justine Frank, Caren Beilin, Rosalind Belben, Orion J. Facey, to mention some). To approach the themes of dysfunctional bodies and ascetic, invisible, mystical erotics, we will watch an excerpt of the vampire movie Dark Angels, zooming in on the struggles of toothless vampires and perform a score for angelic sex after Ida Cradoock’s manual. Within the discourse focused on self healing and betterment, we want to question how the ideas of the self, and our own desires of belonging, and being whole, maintain the systems that perpetuate the violence we’re claiming to be against.

Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician from Los Angeles. Hedva is the author of the essay collection “How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom”, published in September 2024 by Hillman Grad Books. They are also the author of the novels “Your Love Is Not Good” (And Other Stories, 2023) and “On Hell” (Sator Press, 2018), as well as “Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain” (Sming Sming and Wolfman Books, 2020), a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their artwork has been shown in Berlin at Gropius Bau and Haus der Kulturen der Welt; in Los Angeles at JOAN, HRLA, in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time, and the LA Architecture and Design Museum; in London at TINA, Camden Arts Centre, and The Institute of Contemporary Arts; in New York City at Amant Foundation and Performance Space New York; in South Korea at Seoul Museum of Art and Gyeongnam Art Museum; the 14th Shanghai Biennial; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich; Modern Art Oxford; MASS MoCA; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano; and in the Transmediale, Unsound, Rewire, and Creepy Teepee Festivals. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House (2021) and The Sun and the Moon (2019). In 2024, they were a Disability Futures Fellow, funded by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.