Month: April 2023

The next shredding session is scheduled! This may sound as though it has been taken straight from the report of a serial killer shredding their victims, or an office pep talk gone awry, but instead it is from the user of a fetish forum focused on the destruction of raincoats and other outdoor wear. Specifically, these users are interested in PVC rainwear, how it boils or burns, stretches and shreds. Some of them want to wear the clothing before it is destroyed, whereas others see this as sacrilegious. There is no one way to destroy the rainwear, but one thing that unites the purveyors of this fetish is that they find the height of the eroticism, the point of climax, to be seeing a raincoat, or other rainwear, get destroyed. 

My awareness of this fetish started when my partner showed me images of raincoats inside one of their porn magazines, which they collect. They were particularly drawn to images of people wearing full latex outfits, which obscured their face as well as body, with a raincoat over the top. They took me to the Rain Time exhibition at Horse Hospital, and were enamoured with the look of the coats. I must admit, though, I didn’t get it. I understood the aesthetic appeal, but did not see how this clothing could be erotic. Everything thus far had been about the wearing of the clothing, and aesthetic appeal which I could understand only as being similar to a latex attraction. It was only when they showed me a porn DVD, titled RainCoat Destructions, that I began to understand, and take inspiration from, those within this community. 
RainCoat Destructions can, perhaps, be best thought of as a series of vignettes. There is no traditional plot, but instead a series of scenarios in which raincoats are destroyed with an axe, hammered or blown out of a cannon. Though the images were intense, I was immediately drawn to the sounds of the raincoats. The filmmaker makes sure to capture the sound of the coats rustling, being dragged through the leaves, the sound of the raincoats as they are being shredded or hacked to pieces. The actual wearer of the coat is not important, even though she is credited, and instead the camera zooms in close on her boots, her coat and her gloves.

Watching this DVD, I was almost overwhelmed by the noises and I understood that this side of the fetish is not based simply on the look of the coats but also the feel and the sounds that they make. As the woman shuffles through the woods, the coat rustles and the leaves below her crack and what she is destroying is heard loudly and erotically.

Voice Pig, my upcoming audio documentary, revolves around interviews with a dominatrix who uses auralist techniques to control her submissive. Using both her voice and interviews we have conducted in spaces such as pubs and the side of a road, I want to explore the control that can be audited through fetish voice play. Particularly, the raincoat destruction fetish community has struck me because of how intensely the community relies on sound for their pleasure. The rustling, the tearing, the shredding, the crackle of the fire as the PVC burns: this is as erotic and as perverse as the touch of fingers or licking of the tongue. How do these noises not only appeal to a listener’s most primary sensory urges, but can be used as a form of control through the erotic and the sound of fetish.

The Foley for Voice Pigs became very clear to me as I was exploring the project. I wanted to use the sounds of a motor way to contextualise the lonesome and separative themes of the piece. To do this I walked up and down part of the north circular at night and during the day to capture the oncoming traffic, wheels rolling on crunchy tarmac and the various textures of the trucks and lorries passing by.

I heard water and saliva too. I thought these sounds contextualised the heavy sexual themes and anxiety within the piece. I set out by recording still water in a bucket, swooshing it around with my hand and the tongue and saliva movement of myself and my peers. These ASMR-y, heavily textural sounds felt challenging and uncomfortable, heavily denoting the concepts of the piece.

The sounds of boots walking up and down a corridor also seemed to play into the themes of fetishism, I recorded these sounds and added them to my roster.

Over the course of a week, I continued to collect sound, placing them within the piece where they would be most impactful. I plan on using these samples in IRIS 2, a spectral synthesiser, moulding the sounds together to create hyper textural patches.

In a silent room two figures stand without talking to each other. One of them climbs into a black full bodysuit, while the other helps them. Despite the fact that they are not verbally communicating, the two of them are able to maneuver into the suit. There are ever so slight rustles, as both figures are already wearing a full body suit. The room itself is white and sparse, with no furniture being visible aside from a large chair that looks to be used for restraining someone, and the corner of what appears to be an office chair. There is a white tile floor and plain white walls, so the room is atypical of a ‘dungeon’ which many may assume is the standard setting for BDSM activities. Furthermore, the space does not seem to have any decoration in it at all and, because no other camera angles are used in the video aside from a wide angle static shot, it is unclear what else the space is used for. I would not go so far as to refer to the space as the overused term ‘liminal’, but it certainly seems to exist as a non-space, one without a clear purpose or clear boundaries aside from those that the camera brings. 

The figure who is not in the black suit uses a machine to inflate the figure in the black suit. This video is entitled Heavy Rubber Latex Lesbian Inflation and I discovered it on the channel ‘HotFetLife’ on PornHub, though I have been unable to find the origins of the video. However, based on the video’s title we can assume that, despite the fact that the bodies are not obviously gendered, they are both lesbians. It is up to the viewer to place their preconceived notions of lesbianism onto the figures in order to get off, or simply enjoy the video. 

As the figure begins to inflate, the room is filled with the sounds of a machine whirring, and the soft noise of the latex as it expands. The face of the black suited figure blows up to appear even more inhuman lacking even more clear human facial features. There are no bodies grinding together, no pale flesh and fluids, no one is even talking to each other. Instead, the second figure tenderly caresses the inflated body while the whirring continues. The camera slowly zooms in, and then zooms out, and all the while the noise of the machine seems overwhelming inside of the room. Here, the erotic nature of the images is not from the touching of flesh but from the sounds of machines and the touch of rubber to rubber, expansion to expansion. 

Finally, the figure reaches peak inflation and is deflated. They are removed from the suit, and the whirring stops. The sequence is finished, and although no one has obviously climaxed a full form of the erotic has been reached. It is not about how you are, but how you wish to be seen. 

Researching videos such as this has always lead me to question how certain sounds can be erotic, how one does not need to touch in a traditional way and how people can see themselves through sexual acts. Partly, the topic of my upcoming documentary Voice Pig is inspired by my desire to explore people’s deepest desires. Furthermore, I find the grainy aesthetic quality that this video has extremely alluring, and it has been an important aesthetic model for many of my projects.