Blind Date 3.0

Jan Soldat's short films of men performing sexual acts in private rooms form a cinematic archive of physical encounter. Here sexuality is seen less as a marker of identity than as a collective everyday technique of communicative negotiation. The physical encounters resemble selfless gestures: One helps the other satisfy his need. Common expectations are not met in regard to ideas of romantic desire, norms of hetero- and homoeroticism, nor targeted aesthetics of pornographic stimulation. Instead, the short films draw loving attention to disturbances of potential staging (or the staging of potency) and to the awkwardness of shifting from conversation...