What to do with RoxinaRubber?

allthisbangingthesedaysroxina: or what you (don't) want, when you want it (or not).

if you use porn whilst masturbating, you invariably come across images that are unsettling. the 'porn world' is not mediated or monitored too closely, and if you have what can very loosely be described as a 'normative sexuality' , or if your abnormalities aren’t really that extreme you will be innocently flicking through a series of images, following a thread after you have typed a keyword or fetish into a search engine, and accidentally see something you didn’t want to see – a punk wrapped in bin bags and covered in vomit, someone with too much of something shoved in an orifice, and, it must be said, occasionally you come across someone who could be underage. this also means, that when you are masturbating and viewing such material you have to get used to a sudden feeling of disgust, a stomach churning affect that can be quite distressing. you have to get used to the feeling of abjection, the flip side of desire, disgust, when something becomes too much. your blood flows away from your genitals and you are turned off rather than on.

roxinarubber, and her work on xtube is an example of this phenomenon. i could over simplify this by saying that i was turned off when my aesthetic sense was turned on, or something like that, but to be honest, i was turned off because i was scared by some kind of perceived madness and ugliness. i found the images quite frightening. i also found them funny and i am the kind of pervert that rarely finds something that is funny sexy. i was also fascinated by the work, short digitally recorded films between three and five minutes in length where not very much happened. a man in rubbery drag posed and preened, put things in and out his mouth and bum, ineffectually masturbated a flaccid penis, finger fucked dolls in a bedroom, put dildos in them, rubbed his fake boobs in a living room set up, office, outside on the patio, in his carport, etc. always in the same locations. i had a look to see how many films he had made – over 700. this is an opus, i thought, someone’s great work. the relentlessness of it was shocking, amazing. i started flicking through the thumbnails, clicking on a few images, and grew even more fascinated by what i was seeing. it was definitely art, that was without question, but the questions it raised, in relation to how i was reacting to it and what i was supposed to do with this trove, as a ‘maladjusted art historian’, an art critic that now refused to speak about the issue (visual art), became unavoidable. had i discovered a new major artist, and what did this mean? did i care, did i want to share my discovery with ravenous artists, critics, academics? who was this person? did it matter?

each of these short films follows certain rules, she is always masked, although the masks change, most of the time what looks like the face from a rubber doll covers the head, and we do not even see an inch of skin. in many of the videos veils, face coverings of different kinds are put on or removed, usually in front of the camera, ‘us’, and different wigs are put on (off camera) to give the scene a different look. during this roxina poses, badly, occasionally lifting and lowering her legs as if she is exercising or trying to give us a better view of her genitals. sometimes her genitals are exposed (a flaccid penis), and other times she wears a fake rubber vagina over her penis. she stimulates either the ‘real’ or ‘fake’ genitals, putting a dildo or vibrator in her fake vagina, or rubbing it off her anus. sometimes some kind of butt plug is produced and put in her anus or fake vagina, rubbed against it or put in her mouth. she also puts her fingers in her mouth as if masturbating her mouth or feigning the penetration of a penis. other props are involved, such as a pipe form a vacuum cleaner, and this can be used as an extension of the mouth or penis/vagina, or usually is used as a way to link both. she occasionally wraps it round her neck or breasts or just hangs it casually off another prop. the pipe, as phallic proboscis can also be used to breathe on or suck the orifices of the sex dolls that usually litter the scene. these puppets and stand ins for roxina, 'gurls' and 'sluts', wear the same clothes and masks as her.

within these ever-repeated yet always different scenarios, roxina moves things about the room as if setting up the situation, preparing the set for the scene to unfold. she is always restless, in motion, breathing heavily and occasionally saying things that can barely be heard from behind the mask. but even when we do hear the odd word, even these are just empty props, phrases that have been lifted from pornography and are empty signifiers of desire, ‘oh yeah’, ‘fuck me’, ‘mmm…. mmm…’, etc.

repetition seems to be the main concern in what can only be described as an going project. stockings are rolled up and rolled down, material folded and unfolded, tops of thigh high boots folded over then back, lots of preparation and nothing ever happens. there are countless scenes of dry humping, or where rubber genitals are frigged, etc. roxina does silly things, pretending to fuck gas masks and the carpet, puts rubber boots on her hands, dances badly to 'take a walk on the wild side', lifts up the dresses of her doll stand ins, pulling them back down, making sure a piece of rubber is in just the right place on their fake skin, then forgetting it and moving on to something else. she points the remote control at us, at the camera and nothing happens, sometimes confusing a dildo with the remote, and in a parodic parroting of our every day tribulations, looses the dildo or remote control under the sofa or down the back of the settee.