Can ‘Khan’ Oral’s box set “Angels of Disguise (The Abstract Aesthetics of Digital Flaneurism)” has been published by Fantôme in a limited and numbered edition of 100 copies. It contains the book of the same name, the CD “Audiopornography”, and the DVD “Audio Porno Megamix (Come Into My Light).”
The book “Angels of Disguise (The Abstract Aesthetics of Digital Flaneurism)” presents 84 digital prints of found internet imagery categorized in four thematic cabinets.
Logging onto a sex-dating page is like a promise, an overwhelming sea of imagery and data. Next to each other one finds fetish-addicts and ordinaries, “tops” and “bottoms,” “trannies” and “sissies.” Here, everybody can find a sweetheart. Digital flaneurism, an ongoing desire of searching and finding.
“Angels of Disguise (The Abstract Aesthetics of Digital Flaneurism)” is a collection of found images from these virtual sex-dating pages that formulates a poetry of teasing. The images show particulars of the human, but the character or identity is obscured: A shape of a chest might count more than what’s written on a driver’s license. Nobody knows for sure which personality is hidden beyond the image: Is it a constructed identity or an authentic one, a bourgeois or a pervert?
Hierarchies of bodily forms, of beauty or nationality do not make the categories by which the collection is organized, but the various formal disguising, masking, blurring, or highlighting techniques that obliterate the notion of the natural and the real. Hiding is showing.
The DVD “Audio Porno Megamix (Come Into My Light)” contains a sound collage of found amateur audio from internet porn sites accompanied by video. The audio material is also featured, in alphabetical order, on the CD “Audiopornography.”
The investigation took its starting point with the question: Why is pornography mainly visual and rarely audio? The examination that followed ranged from professional and theatrically staged to nowadays predominant amateur porn videos, in which the visual and aural setting and the sexualized atmosphere has become as important as the actual sexual act itself.
The material for the “Audio Porno Megamix (Come Into My Light)” sound collage was collected during seemingly endless walks through cyberspace and in the same manner of flaneurism as in “Angels of Disguise.”
Video sex portals provide any fetishes and sounds imaginable. From outdoors to body sounds to electronic machinery or simply the next-door neighbours’ blaring television set. A major part of the sound mix are corrupted files, damaged by faulty up- or downloading or by improper use of recording equipment. Similar to the “Angels of Disguise” prints, the digital corruption becomes a mask that disguises or highlights the original document.
The “Audio Porno Megamix (Come Into My Light)” is accompanied by a silent and hardly moving short video recording of the moon, which digitally has been time stretched to a 42 minutes slow motion movement. The moon, earth’s face to face eternal companion, becomes a cosmic metaphor for the infinite and perpetual potentiality and quality of what man has created: the computer and the internet; the digital age as a symbol of a global and maybe even cosmic human interconnectedness?
Can ‘Khan’ Oral in his own words: “The idea for ‘Audio Porno Megamix’ started with a question: ‘Why is pornography mainly visual and rarely audio?’ I started looking for examples and only found some 60s flexi disc that was some kind of a phone-sex recording accompanied by a ye-ye lounge soundtrack. I came across ‘Porno for The Blind,’ a rather unexcited narration by someone watching porn, transcribing to the blind what he sees without using any porno slang nor much emotion. I’m not sure if that was just bad casting or on purpose. My next step was collecting audio off of pornographic video material I was looking up on the internet. I realized that the “old school theatrical actors porn” had almost been replaced by massive uploads of amateur video or that what pretends to be amateur. I found interesting that some clips are publicized mute, some original sound was replaced by music, most of the time Top-40, others were corrupted video up- or downloads, in and out of the internet, or simply malfunctioning recording equipment. My attention went towards video in which the erotic self-portrait managed without much moaning, growling, or talking. The room and the sexualized atmosphere became the main attraction. The street sounds, people next door, or the camera hum itself under my headphones opened a 3-dimensional room of showing and not showing, intimacy or in your face, corruption and innocence, a room in the room in the room, endless flaneurism.”
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Khan is a professional in the fields of music, arts, and creative producing. Khan moves at the interface of the digital and the real.
His creative way of expression is music, photography, and art itself. He is interested in new subcultural behaviors that result from our digital interaction and real life together. In his art, he overcomes this dichotomy. “I’m interested in ideas, emotions, and bodily fluids.”
Khan has collaborated with Diamanda Galas, Julee Cruise, Kim Gordon, Brigitte Fontaine, Kid Congo Powers, J Mascis, Little Annie, Jon Spencer, Andre Williams, Jimi Tenor, Francoise Cactus, Alexander Kowalski, Dr. Walker, DJ Kaos, Rodion, Tiefschwarz, Adana Twins, Captain Comatose, International Pony, Air Liquide, Stereo Total, Terranova, Baba Zula, a.m.m.
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The book “Angels of Disguise (The Abstract Aesthetics of Digital Flaneurism)” is also available separately.