Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance

Dedicated to ""academics, whores and academic whores everywhere,"" Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance is a collaboration between sex worker and performance artist Annie Sprinkle (Annie Sprinkle, Post-Porn Modernist: My Twenty-Five Years as a Multimedia Whore) and Vassar College drama professor Gabrielle Cody (Impossible Performance: Duras As Dramatist). Sprinkle is probably the best-known of the first generation of women performance artists whose work focuses on sex and sexuality. Together, the authors reflect on Sprinkle's work and explore tensions within feminism over pornography and the complex power relations inherent in any art that makes use of the female body. The book combines Cody's academic analysis and Sprinkle's own writings with conversations between Sprinkle and her friends (porn star Veronica Vera) and critics (anti-porn feminist Mae Tyme). While too academic for many readers, the book is entertaining and provocative, and should delight any serious student of feminist performance art. Photos not seen by PW. ( June)