Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

We know from our lives and from looking out at the world that there are many ways in which different forms of violence, oppression and marginalisation intersect. This panel brings together activists, academics, artists and writers to explore the importance of these intersections and to strategise the ways we can act in solidarity and collaboration in responding to and disrupting systems of violence.

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] (Resisting) Systems of Violence

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] Radical Transfeminist Activism

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

Racism in the work place as well as in activist circles isn’t exclusive to sex work. This panel will explore the experiences of Black and Brown sex workers and how criminalisation intersects with race and ethnicity.

Composition: Anita Castelino and Sherry Ostapovitch
Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

[Shortcuts] Sex Workers of Colour: Roundtable

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

‘Feminist Porn’ is by now an almost over-familiar buzz phrase; but is the ‘feminist’ bit happening in the script, in consumer habits, or on film sets? In this panel, performers from across the breadth of the porn industry –from mainstream to independent– discuss the way the term ‘Feminist Porn’ has come to be understood, and how this definition might be expanded and redefined in a sex-worker led discourse. The conversation will also touch on industry hierarchies, labour practices, #MeToo representation and intersectional identities within porn.

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] Aesthetics vs Ethics: Expanding Definitions of Feminist Porn

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

In a landscape of increasing austerity and rising poverty, this panel will delve into how austerity harms sex workers, women of colour and families across the UK. It will ask the question: are austerity policies themselves acts of violence?

Composition: Anita Castelino and Sherry Ostapovitch
Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

[Shortcuts] The Impact of Austerity

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

How do we understand work? Our beliefs around what constitutes work and what kinds of work are valued are ever changing: whether it be the ways care and sexual labour are regarded, the role of exploitation and criminalisation, or imagining what a post-work terrain could look like. Broader social and labour struggles, as well as unionising movements, have brought us here, but where do we go next?

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] The Future of Work

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

Examining the intersection of migration policies such as the hostile environment in the UK, the impact of strict border controls, and migrant sex worker experiences across Europe.

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] Sex work and migration in Europe

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About the recording:

Do disabled people require access to sex work or to sex workers? Many sex workers are disabled – what about their clients? Is sex work an easy way out of the benefits system? This panel will look at how disability and sex work intertwine in the UK, and which changes would allow justice for disabled people and for sex workers.

Composition: Anita Castelino and Sherry Ostapovitch
Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

[Shortcuts] How do disability and sex work intersect in the UK today?

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

This panel brings together a group of academics to discuss existing anti-trafficking measures and interventions, examining their use and effectiveness and placing them in the context of global research. The discussion will explore border externalisation measures, intersections of identity, the role of agency, and the impacts of social and systemic violence and exploitation.

Featuring SWARM, Dr Samuel Okyere, Dr Ella Cockbain, Dr Mirna Guha, Marjan Wijers.

Examining Anti-Trafficking Measures: Academic Perspectives

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

A roundtable panel discussion on the traps of visibility, the risks of violence, and making art while experiencing the world as a marginalised body.

Featuring Bridget Minamore, Objects of Desire, Kes Otter Lieffe, Decolonise Fest

Artists Talk Bodies, Visibility and Violence

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

Do disabled people require access to sex work or to sex workers? Many sex workers are disabled - what about their clients? Is sex work an easy way out of the benefits system? This panel will look at how disability and sex work intertwine in the UK, and which changes would allow justice for disabled people and for sex workers.

Featuring Trixie Roberts, Rosa Thomas, Lydia Caradonna, Emily Rose Yates (Enhance).

How Do Disability and Sex Work Intersect in the UK Today?

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

Police are there to keep you safe and prisons are built to keep the bad people away. But what if this weren’t true? What if the police were the source of violence, and prisons a method of social control? Who gets to decide who the “bad people” are? And how does this affect migrants, people of colour, and sex workers? This panel will discuss the intersections between prison abolition and state violence, and break down who exactly is targeted by these structures.

Featuring Aviah Sarah Day, Melissa (SOAS Detainee Support), Kelsey M, Ru (LCAPV), Niki Adams (ECP).

Cops Don't Keep Us Safe: When Survival is Made Criminal

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

Feminism is a key political and organising principle for many movements grounded in liberation and justice, including the one for sex worker rights. For the closing panel of this conference we come together to reflect on the role of feminism in movement struggles and to share our visions for a feminist future. 

Featuring Lola Olufemi, Juno Mac, SWARM, Chryssy Hunter, Aviah Sarah Day, Jade Bentil, Lydia Caradonna, Hello Rooster, Mimi Aum Neko.

Imagining Feminist Futures

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

How do we understand work? Our beliefs around what constitutes work and what kinds of work are valued are ever changing: whether it be the ways care and sexual labour are regarded, the role of exploitation and criminalisation, or imagining what a post-work terrain could look like. Broader social and labour struggles, as well as unionising movements, have brought us here, but where do we go next?

Featuring Katie Cruz, Selma James, Layla-Roxanne Hill, SWARM, Will Stronge (Autonomy).

Future Of Work

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

With so many people alienated from traditional systems of care, what do liberated forms of healthcare look like? How is resilience developed in the face of marginalisation and criminalisation? Where do communities draw strength from when it comes to emphasising not only care but survival? Exploring radical visions of health, these panellists come from a range of backgrounds in trans health, public health, mental health, and HIV activism.

Featuring Micha Frazer-Carroll, Action for Trans Health, Bakita Kasadha, Pippa Grenfell, SWARM.

Strength, Resilience and Healthcare

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

‘Feminist Porn’ is by now an almost over-familiar buzz phrase; but is the ‘feminist’ bit happening in the script, in consumer habits, or on film sets? In this panel, performers from across the breadth of the porn industry –from mainstream to independent– discuss the way the term ‘Feminist Porn’ has come to be understood, and how this definition might be expanded and redefined in a sex-worker led discourse.  The conversation will also touch on industry hierarchies, labour practices, #MeToo representation and intersectional identities within porn.

Featuring Juno Mac, Rooster Ray, Misha Mayfair, Lina Bembe, Estella Bathory.

Aesthetics Vs. Ethics: Expanding Definitions of Feminist Porn

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

A panel of researchers will present on both peer and academic research on sex work covering the dual identities of closeted sex workers; sex work and migration; outdoor sex working areas across Europe; and recent peer research. The panel will discuss the challenges and ethics of sex work research, and will then open the floor to questions.

Featuring Lilith Brouwers, Dr Nick Mai, Dr Raven Bowen, Carolyn Henham, Niki Adams (ECP).

Researching Sex Work

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice.

Under the Nordic Model - sometimes called the “sex buyers law” - sex workers’ clients are criminalised. On this panel, sex workers living in countries affected by this legal model gather to share their views and talk about their experiences. If you’ve seen calls for the introduction of the Nordic Model, or heard debate about how successful it’s been in the countries where it has been implemented, this panel is an opportunity for insight into the lived experiences of those most impacted by this legal change.

Featuring Luca Stevenson (ICRSE), STRASS (France), fuckförbundet (Sweden), PION (Norway), Kate McGrew (SWAI).

Sex Workers On The Nordic Model

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About this recording:

Who writes history? Our panellists will discuss the vital work of collecting radical histories, what this entails and how it can change our perception of both the past and present. Our panellists have archived histories of Black, LGBTQ and sex worker communities, centring those who are often side-lined by dominant narratives.

You’ll hear stories from the archives, learn how these hidden histories are gathered and leave with a renewed understanding of why we must challenge imperialist, heteronormative versions of our past.

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] Radical Histories: Exploring the Archive

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About this recording:

Under the Nordic Model - sometimes called the “sex buyers law” - sex workers’ clients are criminalised. On this panel, sex workers living in countries affected by this legal model gather to share their views and talk about their experiences. If you’ve seen calls for the introduction of the Nordic Model, or heard debate about how successful it’s been in the countries where it has been implemented, this panel is an opportunity for insight into the lived experiences of those most impacted by this legal change.

Featuring Luca Stevenson (ESWA/ICRSE), STRASS (France), fuckförbundet (Sweden), PION (Norway), SWAI (Ireland).

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

[Shortcuts] Sex Workers On The Nordic Model

Decriminalised Futures (2022) is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.The works in the exhibition – comprising ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – include moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

In May 2019 SWARM hosted a three day festival involving panel discussions across a wide range of topics that impact on sex workers, and that connect and intersect with sex worker rights organising and broader struggles for justice. These recordings are taken from that festival, and drawn on for inspiration by artists in this exhibition. The recordings are presented here in an effort to contextualise and deepen our collective understanding of the intersections between contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice.

About this recording:

Police are there to keep you safe and prisons are built to keep the bad people away. But what if this weren’t true? What if the police were the source of violence, and prisons a method of social control? Who gets to decide who the “bad people” are? And how does this affect migrants, people of colour, and sex workers? This panel will discuss the intersections between prison abolition and state violence, and break down who exactly is targeted by these structures.

Featuring Aviah Sarah Day, Melissa, Kelsey, Ru (LCAPSV), Niki Adams (ECP).

Composition and Mix: Sherry Ostapovitch
Edit: Tamara Schreiber and Radio Ava
Recording: Hollis Robin

www.sherryostapovitch.wordpress.com

Popular tracks by Decriminalised Futures