Pornified Homes
Victoria amazonica is one of the most primitive extant flowers on earth.
It is one of the first flowering species
to branch from the stream of evolution.
Its large floating system of leaves occupies space
on the surface of Amazonian water bodies
while keeping competitors away,
so that its grounded roots can expand
onto a large portion of undisputed soil
Due to the lack of light and movement
the bottom of Amazonian rivers and lakes accumulate CO₂
making it difficult for life
It is its thorny stacks of Victoria amazonica
that connect its floating parts
the ones exposed to the underwater world
to its grounded ones, bringing the oxygen needed
to keep alive its roots system
Many botanists consider Victoria amazonica's reproduction
a baroque and primitive oddity
but it has allowed it to expand over a great territory
which encompasses French Guiana, Bolivia or Brazil
and expands into enclosed environments
in Brooklyn, Helsinki, Oslo or Miami
Victoria amazonica changes gender over a 24-hour period of pollination
The flower only lives two days
When it blossoms, it is white, and broadcasts an intense fragrance
It works as a multisensory billboard
that glows in the dark of the chilling rainforest
and attracts Cyclocephala castanea beetles
that have often traveled for more than 200 km away, via the wind
They bring with them the pollen of distant Victoria flowers
where they happen to have spent their previous night
The warm and comfortable environment of the chamber
attracts as many as twenty 3-cm.-long beetles
convened in the distance to spend the night together
Once they enter the chamber, the flower closes
due to the drop in temperature at night
In such a crowded and comfortable interior
beetles find unfamiliar partners to copulate with
Instigated by this transpecies architecture of sex
the beetles' movement frees the pollen they carry
and the flower gets pollenized by a genetically diverse
and distant specimen of Victoria amazonica
With the sunrise, the flower changes gender, and turns pink
The flowers remain closed for another few hours
but now the stigma, loaded with pollen, warms
and this attracts the beetles to the upper part of the flower
Only when the beetles are covered with pollen does the flower open
freeing them to the windy morning
that will take them to new and distant locations
where the genes of their host will find new exotic chambers
of glow and unfamiliar sex
November, 1849 was the first time Victoria amazonica blossomed in the U.K.
Joseph Paxton, chief gardener at the Duke of Devonshire's estate,
Chatsworth, designed a heated glass house
so that his employer could succeed in a scientific competition
by offering Queen Victoria the first Victoria amazonica
to blossom in the country
Forty-thousand Londoners saw the image of Anna
Joseph Paxtons's daughter, at the Lily House
on a gigantic leaf of the blossom Victoria amazonica
when it was published in the Illustrated London News
The extant Waterlily House, in Kew Gardens
was build as induration of Paxton's invention, in 1852
The modular manufacturing made it possible
for the iron-made sexualizing devices to be introduced
in upper-middle-class residential architecture.
One of the main architectural endeavors of the 19th century
was to engineer glass houses to introduce the sexualized specimens
of remote colonial territories into British homes
The keyword 'Brazilian' is the number #1 search
on Sleepyboy.com, Europe's most popular male-escort website
It was launched in February, 2000
as the personal site of British escort Marcus Denton
It was not until 2003 that the site became a space
where different male sex workers could be listed
With 686,565 consolidated users
who spend an average of 11 minutes on the site
Sleepyboy.com increases its company value
at a rate of 18% every three months
Denton runs a holding of successful gay sites:
GaySceneCams.com, SleepyboysCam.com
MenForRentNow.com and domains such as BoyOrchard.com
NakedStraightLads.com, GayRevue.com
ShemaleEscortCams.com, NakedStraightLads.com
and Silverboys.com
>From those sites, he drives the flow of internet users
to his lifestyle site, where he can be seen
driving fancy cars or vacationing with trendy young lovers
Over 10 years, Sleepyboy.com has moved
from Denton's personal escort page to becoming a platform
that not only collectively commodifies sex,
but also accommodates in London an urbanism
to articulate self-branding with aspirational consumption
Rafael thinks it is 'hot blood' that his clients expect
when hiring an escort tagged as 'Brazilian' on Sleepyboy.com
they believe Brazilians are fully sexualized
Rafael says, "My clients think Brazilians only think and talk sex"
When asked why his profile in Sleepyboy.com
is one of the most seen he gives two reasons
First, he looks young and innocent, and that sells
Rafael is not actually his real name
Giving himself an archangel's name is part of a self-branding strategy
Second, he thinks that everyone fancies sexy, wealthy people
He wears jeans and Armani polos, as he thinks rich guys do,
but he wears them very snug to make them sexy
On his cellphone, he carries a picture of his dad, mom, siblings
and the son he had when he was a teenager
He constantly chats with them through
Although he loves them,
he did not want to get stuck in the life he had in Brazil
Two years ago, when he turned 19, he left the Central Brazil town
where he had spent his entire life
His parents were too strict and strongly religious
At 13, he began to work as a real estate broker
construction worker, and cellphone seller
Working 13 hours a day, he would make 1,000 reals a month
of which 700 went towards rent
He could not afford to party, even once a month
Inspired by [Tachi Zaki], he asked a friend
the day he was leaving Brazil
to tattoo him a British Imperial state crown
as it was redesigned for Queen Victoria in 1838, on his right chest
To celebrate his first year in London
he added to the crown Julius Caesar's quote, "Veni Vidi Vici"
written in Edwardian calligraphy
He sublets a 50-square-meter apartment in a basement in Chelsea
It is here where he often meets his clients
He has not bought a single piece of furniture for the apartment
but he did buy a flatscreen TV and a sound system
When he is not working, he spends time with his girlfriend
watching Mo Vlogs' YouTube channel, 'Rich Boy in the Middle East'
With 1.4 million followers, it shows the daily life
of a young Dubai man and his girlfriend
who play around in Lamborghinis
and shop for expensive clothes in endless air-conditioned malls
When Rafael first arrived in London
he lived in a big apartment shared with many escorts
His business requires that he be connected
but not too connected, to his competitors
He believes the way to emancipate himself
from Brazil's working-class economy
is to surround himself with rich people
For him, real estate is the real politics of emancipation
He will soon be eligible to rent a big apartment
so that he can quit escorting
and instead sublet rooms to young Brazilian escorts
Bruno's profile on Sleepyboy.com presents him as a Brazilian man
available for paid sexual encounters in his apartment
He grew up with his mom and siblings in a favela in Rocinha
When he was a kid, his mom called him 'Bambam'
after the Flintstones' sweet and strong kid character
At 14, he moved to Rio de Janeiro
and decided to get the name 'BAMBAM' tattooed on his forearm
In Rio, he lived on the streets for two years
Using the parallel bars at the street gyms
and inspired by his late cousin, who was muscular
he began to sculpt his body
He had his mom and siblings' faces tattooed
on different parts of his body
as a way of bridging the distance between himself and his loved ones
He was already a good dancer
when a religious organization took him to a children's shelter
where he lived for awhile and learned to play guitar and drums
While dancing at the Carnival, someone invited him to move to London
where he ended up marrying a British lawyer
They communicated with
until Bruno, with the lawyer's help, could speak English
This opened up many opportunities, and Bruno started dancing
at the Spin-Flow club called 'Heaven'
Four years later, his videos on YouTube, which involve him dancing
have millions of views, and he is regularly invited
to dance in clubs in Hamburg and Ibiza
He uses one cellphone to communicate
with his clients in the UK and Germany
a second one for storage, and to play the music he uses for dancing
and a third used only for
to contact his mates and relatives in Brazil
Sex clients, dancing, and loved ones in Brazil
remain independent realms in the way Bruno distributes them
among his three cellphones
About his clients, Bruno says, "In the UK and Germany
people love Brazilians. They think we rock the world
in a good way, that we are beautiful and sexy
My clients want to know more about my tattoos, my life in Rio
They love to take me to their homes
It makes them think that their life is fun and sexy
Bruno lives with his dog Eros in a small apartment
at the rear part of a fancy building in Kensington
He needs to live in a central and prestigious part of London
This helps clients feel comfortable
He is turning his 28-square-meter apartment
into what he calls, 'a pornifying stage'
One year ago, he added a plinth to his window
He can now jump from a platform on top of his washing machine
onto a tatami, and then slowly move to the end, leaning on the wall
He has already installed a sound system
and soon the lights and cameras will arrive
Bruno's society is one built to make it possible
for clients in the UK and Germany
to bring sexiness into their daily lives
It is a complex assemblage of demarcations that can only remain together
through the mediation of independent phones
tattoos, and staged interiors, and that are reprogramming
London's central and prestigious neighborhoods
into networks of transnational daily-life pornification
Central London, so many times narrated as the hub
of the globalized post-states oriented government
contains an ecosystem of shady back-backyards
and downrated basement apartments
This is a transnational urbanism that is not built out of blocks, roads
and institutional buildings, but rather composed of the way humans
bereft of economic power, are displaced and then sexualized
by the way their offline existence is pornified through online projection
Colonial creation of a geography of center and periphery
might now be replaced by a layered coexistence
in which the architecture of properness
the one that accommodates law firms, wealthy residences
and corporative headquarters contains
a secluded and sexualized backyard architecture of otherness
We might have never been global
We inhabit the way transnational constellations
negotiate their articulation with each other
It might be in the way our skins, texts,
desires, loved ones, domestic interiors
unfamiliar interaction and sound systems get together
where we can find the urbanism we now live by