Ms Itziar Bilbao Urrutia
Contact
- Email: k2117632@kingston.ac.uk
- Location: Penrhyn Road
- Faculty: Kingston School of Art
- School: School of Arts, Culture and Communication
- Department: Department of Humanities
- Personal website
Research project: UC-SC vs ATVOD: state censorship of female sexual dominance (Femdom).
Abstract
Itziar's written critical commentary accompanying her portfolio of published work, centres on the bizarre "life imitating art" dimension of her fight against ATVOD, aka the British Authority for Television on Demand. All aspects of her practice contribute to the critique of art, sex and censorship, but in 2013, after having her femdom video studio maliciously reported as "extreme porn" to ATVOD, the former British internet online video regulator, she started, along with Backlash.org, a campaign against encroaching internet censorship and, specifically, the regulator's focus on non-normative representations of female pleasure such as Femdom, female ejaculation and facesitting. This culminated in the infamous 2014 AVMS Regulations Bill, which was eventually repealed after tireless campaigning. Itziar's critical commentary for her PhD focuses on her use of independent, female- led porn, from a feminist perspective, to challenge baseless moral panics and the state's structural sexism.
- Research degree: PhD by prior publication/portfolio
- Title of project: UC-SC vs ATVOD: state censorship of female sexual dominance (Femdom).
- Research supervisor: Dr Martin Dines
Biography
Itziar is a visual artist, activist and pornographer based in London. Her practice is linked to the Capital's many sexual subcultures. Her interest in the disobedience of the Monstrous Feminine has led her to explore mediums unrelated to the art tradition, such as porn. Since 2004, her projects have been based on an exploration of the fetish scene as a space of identity and praxis. This led her to establish her own fetish porn studio in 2010, The Urban Chick Supremacy Cell. Using digital adult content as survival work and artistic practice, she mixes the discourse of Femdom with the aesthetics and rhetoric of historical radical action and feminism, such as Valerie Solanas and the Baader-Meinhof group. Her practice as an artist and as a femdom fetish pornographer cross over and mix, often deliberately.
Areas of research interest
- Feminism
- Gender Studies
- Queer studies
- State censorship
- Porn as a film genre
- The monstrous feminine
- Fetishism
- Dystopia
- Leo Bersani
- Valerie Solanas
Qualifications
- University of Birmingham - POLSIS. 1 year doctoral research
- Goldsmiths College, University of London. MFA in Visual Arts
- Goldsmiths College, University of London. Postgraduate Degree in Visual Arts
- UPV-EHU - Facultad de Bellas Artes de la Universidad del País Vasco (Bilbao)
Funding or awards received
- EREMUAK – Art Development Grant.
- Beca de Artes Plásticas del Gobierno Vasco.
- Beca De Artes Plásticas de la Diputación Foral de Bizkaia.
- Sexual Freedom Coalition Awards – Sex worker activist of the year 2014.
Publications
- DAU
- A VOID Magazine
- Forum
- Filament
- Bizarre.
- El País
- La Vanguardia.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/web-dominatrix-wins-david-and-goliath-battle-regulators-9672463.html
Conference papers
2019
- SWARM: Decriminalised Futures Confernce. The Femdoim Archive: presentation on the creation of sex work archives.
- "Yes, but is it porn?" - Talk & Q&A at Cable Depot Gallery.
2018
- ROLES – Sex and Gender Conferece. University of Birmingham and Birmingham City University.
- Beanflicks – Feminist erotica and film – VQ Collective, University of Birmingham.
- JORNADAS EREMUAK – Talk and Symposium, Bilbao (Spain).
2017
- REVOLUCIONARIA, RECREATIVE, REPUGNANTE – Sex, art and gender conference and workshop organised by Itziar Bilbao Urrutia. Bilbao (Spain).
- PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A WHORE – FEMINISTALDIA. Feminist conference. San Sebastian (Spain).
2015
- Sexual Cultures 2 - University of Sunderland.
- Representations of Female Sexual desire – Middlessex University.
- PECANS – Sexuality & the Law – University of Brighton. Round table on pornography and the law.
- Fisting, Laceration and Blood Play in Femdom: Presentation for conference on the Spanner Case, organised by Dr Alex Dymock and Dr Matt Lodder. University of Essex & Royal Holloway.
2013
– (The End of Porn) When the Computer Became Boring – talk and performance. Curated by Dr Sarah Taylor-Harman (Brunel University).
2011
– Sex on Trial – paper as part of the series "Britain on Trial", organizado por la Dr Meg John Barker, Profesor Lisa Downing, and other academics.
2009
– Porn Cultures – Leeds University, with Dr Alex Dymock, representing anit-censorhsip campaigners Backlash UK.