Between 2020 and 2021, the "Xiao-Yu Incident" in Taiwan brought attention to the misuse of deepfake technology in pornography. Youtuber Xiao-Yu was reported to have changed more than 100 faces of actresses, politicians, and internet celebrities onto AV actresses, subsequently commercializing the content on Telegram. This case highlighted the growing phenomenon of deepfake pornography as a form of digital sexual violence that is spreading globally and remains inadequately addressed by legal frameworks.
This panel discussion examines the ethics of technology and explores potential artistic interventions through historical, documentary, and creative lenses. Finnish media researcher Susanna Paasonen will provide an overview of the history of “face-swapping” in pornography. British filmmaker Sophie Compton, director of the documentary Another Body, will discuss her experience documenting a victim of deepfake pornography on a school campus and her research into the broader landscape of its abuse. Dutch artist Lotte Louise de Jong, a member of the team from the digital artwork Toyboi, will explore the gender biases in the databases of non-consensual deepnude platforms and artistic ways to reverse these biases within the patriarchal society.
Date: 2025/03/06 (Thu.) 20:00-22:00
Location: After online registration, the Google Meet link will be sent.
※This lecture will be conducted in English.
※This event is part of the "Cultural Frontline" series by C-LAB Contemporary Art Platform.
"Cultural Frontline" is a series of events launched by C-LAB Contemporary Art Platform. Its goal is to promote and encourage artistic creation that focuses on humanitarian concerns and explores various topics, offering a critical examination of contemporary cultural phenomena. In addition to independently organized lectures and screening events, it also seeks to collaborate with external exhibitions. The aim is to create a dialogue platform beyond traditional exhibition mechanisms, expanding the reach and energy of cultural experimentation within the existing contemporary art and cultural methods.
Topic and Speaker Introduction
- Susanna Paasonen｜ Real, Fake, Un/wanted
Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at University of Turku, Finland. With an interest in studies of sexuality, networked media and affect, she is the PI of the research consortium “Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture” (2019-2025) and the author of e.g., Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press 2011), Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play (Goldsmiths Press 2018), NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media (with Kylie Jarrett and Ben Light, MITP 2019), Objectification: On the Difference Between Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer, and Clarissa Smith (Routledge 2020) and Yul Brynner: Exoticism, Cosmopolitanism and Screen Masculinity (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Susanna serves on the editorial boards of e.g., New media & society, Social Media & Society, Sexualities, Porn Studies, and International Journal of Cultural Studies and has just finished a book on sexual social media platforms with Jenny Sundén and Katrin Tiidenberg for MITP.
2. Sophie Compton｜ANOTHER BODY and the Landscape of Deepfake Abuse
Sophie Compton is an EMMY nominated documentary director/producer who tells women's stories of injustice and healing. Alongside every film she creates a substantial impact project to ensure the story drives real cultural change. A Doc NYC 40 under 40 honoree and Sundance Catalyst fellow, her work has been supported by Impact Partners, Hot Docs, the IDA, BFI Doc Society. Her debut feature ANOTHER BODY follows a student’s search for justice after discovering deepfake abuse of her online. Premiering at SXSW where it won the Special Jury Award, it went on a multi award winning run and was released globally in cinemas and on broadcast by Utopia, Modern Films, BBC, Arte, CBC and others. Alongside, the impact project My Image My Choice amplifies survivor voices, stimulating a movement in which women from actor Sophia Bush to Youtuber Gibi ASMR and hundreds of private citizens spoke out about deepfake abuse. Working with The White House, World Economic Forum, UK parliament and more, these testimonies led to major international press coverage and new legislation and policy. Her second film HOLLOWAY premiered at the London Film Festival, winning the Audience Award for Best Documentary. It will be released in June.
3. Lotte Louise de Jong｜TOYBOI - Art as Intervention in AI Bias and Non-Consensual Nudity
Lotte Louise de Jong is an artist from the Netherlands based in Rotterdam. Her work is research-based and ranges from physical, digital and online installations to more traditional forms of narrative. The main thematics in Lotte’s research are identity, economy and sexuality. More specifically her practice addresses how we, as a society, view and shape our identity and intimacy through mediated spaces like the digital world. She approaches her practice as a free space; a place where morality gives way to nuance, humor and empathy. In her work, she investigates the way we view online (sexual) culture and our own positions within, while remaining critical of the social, cultural and economic structures that create inequality inside and outside this sphere of online intimacy. Her work, Toyboi, is an artistic collaboration between Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang, Claudia Oliveira, Gema FB Martín, Lotte Louise de Jong. The work changed the images on the knick knacks that traditionally feature naked women into images of male nudity with distorted and deformed genitalia generated by non-consensual undressing AI platforms. The work has been exhibited in Ars Electronica Festival, Kikk Festival, IMPAKT.
Curator
Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang
Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang is a researcher and visual artist from Taiwan. She holds a BA in Philosophy from National Taiwan University (TW) and an MA in Media Studies from Leiden University (NL). Her research interests focus on the relationship between body and technology from the perspective of postcolonialism, cyberfeminism and digital materialism. Projects she has curated include www.couterarchive.commons at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2024), IMPAKT Festival - Our Terms, Our Conditions(2023), Taipei Digital Art Festival-Fake It Real (2022). As an artist, she often makes performance films derived from her poetry on the vulnerability of (female) body and sexual violence. Her works have been exhibited at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cinedance Festival at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam, Roll Out Dance Film Festival in Macau, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade and Venice International Performance Art Week curated by the artistic duo VestAndPage as part of the Performance Art Program conceived by Marta Jovanović, among others. In 2022-2023, she received the Mondrian Artist Start Grant and exhibited her works at Rotterdam Art Week in 2024.
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▶ The organizer reserves the right to make any changes.
Organizer｜Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab
Executive Organizer｜C-LAB Contemporary Art Platform
"Cultural Frontline" is a series of events launched by C-LAB Contemporary Art Platform. Its goal is to promote and encourage artistic creation that focuses on humanitarian concerns and explores various topics, offering a critical examination of contemporary cultural phenomena. In addition to independently organized lectures and screening events, it also seeks to collaborate with external exhibitions. The aim is to create a dialogue platform beyond traditional exhibition mechanisms, expanding the reach and energy of cultural experimentation within the existing contemporary art and cultural methods.