Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol

Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol
Opening scene showing the split-screen perspective
Artist	Emma Sulkowicz
Year	2015
Type	Performance art, participatory art
Subject	Campus sexual assault
Location	Columbia University, New York City
Website	www.cecinestpasunviol.com

Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol ("This is not a rape") is a work of performance art by American artist Emma Sulkowicz. The work consists of a website, video, introductory text and open comments section. Released on 3 June 2015, the video shows Sulkowicz having sex with an anonymous actor in a dorm room at Columbia University in New York City. The film was directed by artist Ted Lawson in early 2015 while Sulkowicz was in her final year of a visual-arts degree at Columbia.

The film illustrates the shift between consensual and non-consensual sex. Named after "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" from René Magritte's The Treachery of Images, the eight-minute scene shows Sulkowicz and the actor having what begins as a consensual sexual encounter, and ends with what appears to be non-consensual anal sex. (The introductory text notes that the sex was consensual and only appears to be rape.)

The online response to the video is a key part of the work, described as an example of participatory art. Sulkowicz said she wanted to know "what the public does with [the video], which begins with the way they deal with it from the moment it's disseminated." Shortly after it appeared, the video was taken offline by a denial-of-service attack. By 9 June 2015, there were 2,700 comments on the site, most of them hostile, sexist and ridiculing. Sulkowicz said she strongly believed in the video's importance, but that making it had been a "terrifying" and "traumatizing" experience.

Artist

Emma Sulkowicz, 2014

Emma Sulkowicz (born 1992 in New York City) is of Chinese-Japanese-Jewish descent, the daughter of Sandra Leong and Kerry Sulkowicz, psychiatrists from Manhattan. She attended Dalton School and Columbia University, obtaining an undergraduate degree in visual arts in 2015. Her senior thesis at Columbia and first notable work, Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015), consisted of Sulkowicz carrying a mattress wherever she went on campus, in protest at the university's handling of a complaint against a student she alleged had anally raped her in 2012. A university inquiry cleared the student of responsibility in relation to Sulkowicz's complaint.

Work

Video

Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol consists of a website hosting a video, an introductory text and an open comments section. Its existence was made public on 4 June by a Facebook post from the video's director, Ted Lawson. Sulkowicz had the idea for the piece in December 2014, and performance artist Marina Abramović put her in touch with Lawson to direct it. Sulkowicz wrote the script and introductory text, chose the position of the cameras, the lighting and the appearance of it having been filmed by security cameras. The scene was filmed three times in one continuous take during the Columbia winter break, between the end of December 2014 and early January 2015. Lawson told ArtNet that Sulkowicz had "insisted on it being completely real. ... That's what makes it a performance art piece. You have to get it in one take and there is no trickery."

The scene appears on a split screen from four angles with a timestamp in each corner, beginning 02:10 and ending 02:18. Lawson said this perspective "removes the wall between the viewer and the action. ... Security camera footage – there’s something real about that, and it makes the video that much more shocking and that much more pure." When the video was first posted, the timestamp included the date of the alleged assault, 27 August 2012, but this was later blurred.

The video begins with Sulkowicz and the actor, whose face is blurred, entering the room, undressing each other, then kissing and engaging in oral and vaginal sex, the latter with a condom. Three minutes into the video, the actor hits Sulkowicz several times, then removes the condom, pushes his hands and her legs against her neck or throat, and penetrates her anally. She screams, tells him to stop, and puts her hand over her face. After a short time, the actor stops abruptly and leaves the room with his clothes in his hands. Sulkowicz is left curled on the bed with her back to the camera. After wrapping herself in a towel, she briefly leaves the room, returns and makes her bed, then appears to fall asleep.

Lawson said he thought the piece was "super risky" and courageous. He told the Columbia Spectator that Sulkowicz and the actor had captured the shift from the consensual to non-consensual: "It's hard to wrap your head around how could it be consensual and even be kinky and then become non-consensual. I think the video expresses the possibility that you don't forfeit that [consensuality] ever." Sulkowicz told the Guardian that the experience of making the video has been traumatizing and had left her in a "very scared, emotional state for days."

Text

The video's introductory text said that it was not an enactment of Sulkowicz's rape allegation: "Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol ... [is] about your decisions, starting now. It's only a reenactment if you disregard my words. ... Sulkowicz makes the video available, but gives only provisional consent to view it:

Do not watch this video if your motives would upset me, my desires are unclear to you, or my nuances are indecipherable.

You might be wondering why I've made myself this vulnerable. Look—I want to change the world, and that begins with you, seeing yourself. If you watch this video without my consent, then I hope you reflect on your reasons for objectifying me and participating in my rape, for, in that case, you were the one who couldn't resist the urge to make Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol about what you wanted to make it about: rape.

Please, don't participate in my rape. Watch kindly.

Sulkowicz then asks a series of questions: "Are you searching for ways to either hurt or help me? ... Do you think I'm the perfect victim or the world's worst victim? ... Do you hate me? If so, how does it feel to hate me?"

Comments

Lawson said Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol explores the relationship between art and social media, "this giant, polluted ocean." A key part of the work was the online reaction, particularly in the website's comments section. The 2,700 comments within the first five days were mostly hostile or ridiculing. They included sexual and racist insults, threats, comments about Sulkowicz's physical appearance, ethnicity and mental health, that the scene did not depict rape, that Sulkowicz should get back in the kitchen, and that women should not be allowed to vote. Someone posted the video on a porn site. Comments on other sites were both positive and negative. The video was the victim of a denial-of-service attack by hackers on 4 June, according to DigitalOcean, which hosts the site, and on 5 June there were technical problems caused by the numbers attempting to access it.

Reception

Priscilla Frank in The Huffington Post described the work as "simple yet stinging, providing imagery that lingers like a nightmare, never quite comprehensible but impossible to forget." Hannah Rubin, writing in The Forward, called it "sophisticated and brilliant," and despaired of the lack of empathy on display in the website's comments section. Suzannah Weiss wrote in Bustle that Sulkowciz's provisional consent to watch the video was a metaphor for sexual consent, in that both the video and a sexual partner may be available, but respect is required to stop boundary violations. The actor in the video had consent to appear to rape her, but no one had consent to watch the video with hostility or post it to a porn site.