POV paper issue #9

The POV paper team needs you!

POV paper is an independent swiss publication that works to develop new esthetic approaches to bodies, gender and sexualities, through photography, graphic design and writing. POV means point-of-view, subjectivity, which is at the core of our endeavour: to bring together the diversity of perpectives and experiences is essential to created a space to explore themes such as gender and sexuality in their fundamentally personal and political dimensions.

The project was created in 2015 within the festival La Fête du Slip in Lausanne. We rapidly noticed that the paper was reaching an audience beyond the festivalgoers. We got a distribution deal with Antenne Books in London, and now POV paper is available all over Europe and even in Japan! Unfortunately this is not enough to make POV paper financially viable.

We need your help to continue to exist!

Up until now, POV paper was paid for by La Fête du Slip, and so our budget was subject to the to and fros of the festivals financial succes from year to year. It’s very difficult to sustain a regular publication in these conditions, so we decided to go out on our own and see if that works. We founded an independent association, as well as a new editorial board and a professional structure. We started applying for every possible public subsidy and private fund. We are moving from the quarterly newspaper format towards an annual magazine. The new format is larger (~200 pages) and aims to be easier to distribute.

Unfortunately so far, none of our applications for funding have been accepted, so we are coming to you as a last resort!

Fetishism... a different kind of love?

After sex ed, sex work, consent, shame or emotions, the theme of the all new issue of POV paper will be: Fetishism. Publishing a printed object in the digital era and in the midst of a crisis in the print media is a radical and essentially fetishist act.

Forgotten child of feminism and the sexual revolution, fetishism will be treated in this issue as, on the one hand, a force of enslavement, reifying individuals without their consent, but also as a tool of personal and collective empowerment towards a problematic world, creating meaning, alternatives and pleasure.

For this issue, we assembled a team of young swiss photographers, Charlotte Krieger, Jean-Vincent Simonet & Basile Mookherjee. We connected them with performers and activist from the feminist-queer-sex-positive scene to create the visual content. The main series of this issue is a collaboration between Jean-Vincent Simonet and performer and director Vex Ashley, co-founder of Four Chambers. An exclusive work, with an interview of Vex Ashley telling us about her fetishistic relationship to the image and the symbols that permeate her work.

The visual work of Karla Hiraldo Voleau will also be included. Shot in the Dominican Republic, it explores the male body as object of desire. Sacred Sadism, a duo from Los Angeles presents a novel approach to BDSM practices and the representation of power dynamics through an ecological perspective. Dennis Vetter, german filmcritic, analyses the way that the codes of fetish and SM subcultures have been appropriated and rebranded by mainstream marketing and media.

This issue will also feature a dozen interviews with artists such as Ziúr, Gaff-E, My Bad Sister, Lina Bembe, Dwam, Rooster, Parker Marx… and personal stories about fetish in intimate settings, in sex-work, or in an effort to queerify urban public spaces.

Support your local publication!

We’ve been trying to raise funds and apply to every funding opportunity for over 6 months. All we’ve gotten are closed doors. It’s not easy for public and private financiers to support a magazine, especially one that explores touchy and sensitive issues like gender and sexuality.

The POV paper team is, and will remain, volunteers. But we believe that it is essential to multiply spaces to discuss and share around issues of diversity, and to question our representations of gender, sexuality through political lenses.

YOUR SUPPORT WILL ALLOW US TO:

• Cover printing and production expenses of POV#9: 200 pages, 185 x 260 mm, CMJN, 800 issues!
• To support a local publication that support the collaboration of swiss and international artists, and to showcase swiss artists abroad.
• To shine light on sensible and critical artists, sex-works, activits, writers and performers who we’ve been very fortunate to be able to work with (Thank You <3)
• To create an editorial object we can all be proud of! <3