‘Live sex show’ performance draws outrage at a Buenos Aires university

Students at the state-run University of Buenos Aires gathered on Wednesday at the main university theater and watched in stunned silence. There was no professor analyzing a philosophical text, or activists engaged in a political debate. Instead, there was a real-time live sex show billed as an “artistic performance,” with the apparent blessing of university staff.

The University of Buenos Aires

A group of students, professors, and researchers of the School of Social Sciences organized the event as part of a series called “Wednesdays of Pleasure,” inviting a Spanish performance group to engage in a “post-porn” artistic act that included sexual intercourse, bondage, and sadomasochism.

“Post-porn comes to the School of Social Sciences, passing through the halls and sexualizing everything around it. A proposal to expand the pornographic imagination and experience other sexualized ways of living in the university environment,” the flier reads.

“There were roughly 50 people watching in silence, astonished at what was going on. Many of them were recording it with their phones,” Martín, a student at the university who witnessed the activity, told the PanAm Post. “They were watching it surprised; it’s not a common situation at the university.”

“Post-porn” is described as an “artistic movement” that combines pornography with feminist and post-structuralist views.

The University Students Association complained that the performers — which included a journalist and a feminist activist, as well as members of the Spain-based group PostOp — used their booths at the main building that are normally reserved for political activity.

“We want to say that not only did they not ask us for permission, but after urinating and ejaculating over our materials, they didn’t even clean it. They left used condoms along with a banner criticizing the Students Association and its management,” the student faction of the Workers’ Party said in a release.

University authorities say they were not aware of the activity and have “asked for a report to find out who organized and authorized” the event to punish those responsible. School of Social Sciences faculty explained the performance was not authorized to take place at the main hall.

Sources: Clarín, La Nación, PanAmPost