Maman ~ I & II
About Maman I
An open, adoring mouth. Consuming. Submission through care.
See the full film or trailer here.
From the Director, Vex Ashley
Thank you all for your patience and excitement over this film, it’s really been a labour of love (get it), let’s go.
When me and Valerie connected over a shared love of deep discourse and being called Mommy we knew we had to become co-conspirators. Over lockdown, out of the isolation and disconnection to our bodies blossomed a fascination with an experimentation. I saw someone online talking about taking breastfeeding herbs and fell down an internet rabbit hole of how to induce lactation, even in someone who has never been pregnant, even apparently, regardless of biological sex. We embarked on this journey together, putting our bodies to the test in a bio hacking experiment that ended up stretching out of the course of a few years. Taking pills and herbs and buying pumps, setting alarms and experimenting with what a body can be and do.
This is the result of years of research, long conversations, intense protocols and thinking and rethinking what being Mommy is and means for us. The film is an exploration of why are we into this and what is it that underpins and intertwines with this kink. It’s a dense subject and it will be divided into 2 parts with 2 separate scenes and interviews which could never go far enough to define what the potential in this exploration is for everyone, this is our deeply personal and non-exhaustive perspective.
Why is ‘Mommy’ less accepted than ‘Daddy’ in kink? Why do we like to be called Mommy?
Why is the sexuality of the mother archetype so taboo?
In part I we look into and then through the obvious taboo to unpick what makes this such potent and captivating space to play and fuck in.
On the way we uncover the beauty of vulnerability, submission through comfort rather than pain, giving yourself up to a higher power, the role of pleasure and oxytocin in connection and milk making, playing with the implied gender of our body parts and the annihilation of the self. We dive into the symbolic significance of breast milk and what is so powerful about the connection of feeding someone from your body and the erotics of being consumed.
Conceived by, and featuring, Valerie and Vex with JV as the consummate adoring, open mouth who dived into the welcoming womb of the project so perfectly.
About Maman II
So good, we came back for a second helping.
From the Director, Vex Ashley
Following on from the first part of this project exploring our Mommy kinks, we get deeper into our bodies, how it's less about the label of the individual body part but more about the power or context you give it and how it is received.
How MILF is an object but Mommy is a subject. How a breast can feel like more like a dick but also how a dick can be a proxy for the breast and Mommy's dick makes it as a soft, suckling object of feeding and nurturing rather than forcing and taking.
That being baby is a space for obliteration of of the self, of ego and of gender - babies after all are mostly genderless. That pleasing mommy and doing what she wants and needs for a change can be a way to give back some of the care she provides.
About softness and wetness and opening yourself up. About consuming and feeding, being merged and joined. One consuming the other, both folding into each other, an ouroboros - temporarily one. And how bodies and body parts; gender, mothering and nourishment are more fluid (excuse the pun) than we imagine.
Going back to why Valerie and I started exploring this project in the first place - does our decision to probably not be mothers, inform and deepen the complexity about why we love to play Mommy in bed. The grief of giving up that space, processed through the lens of the erotic.
For part II, we reconnected with the Velvet and Sadie who we first worked with on our film Crash. When we put the call out for potential performers to join the project we were looking for people who had experience of Mommy dynamic and who could bring something to our personal understanding of the project. Their dynamic in their relationship is as much about sex as it's about what's not sexual and learning all the ways in which they play with the archetype really informed and expanded so much of the conversations me and Valerie were already beginning to have about bodies and gender and community and care.
About Four Chambers
creative pornography project making short films with sex & cinema
From a background in analog photography, art school bullshit and digital sex online, Four Chambers is a project, an idea and an ongoing collaboration with the intention to explore the aesthetic and conceptual potential of pornography as a creative medium for ideas.
Headed by performer, Vex Ashley and self taught in film making with an emphasis on collaborative DIY practices; Four Chambers now exists alongside a new wave of creators making contemporary pornographic work from a new perspective.
The project remains deliberately ambiguous, rejecting labels for both their films and performers, existing in- between genres of both art and pornography and dismissing the need for a definition of either.
Exploring themes of technology, symbolism, mythology and alchemy and their intrinsic intersection with sex and part of the growing decentralisation from traditional adult industry business, Four Chambers is independent, DIY, conceptual, pornography cinema.
About Vex Ashley
porn performer, director and film maker.
After rejecting being demoted to "muse" spending 3 years at art school and getting naked online as a cam girl, Vex started making work as Four Chambers to expand the idea of what sex on film could say, do and be. Vex performs in, directs, edits and produces the Four Chambers project in collaboration with a partner and the performers. She speaks, writes and spends a lot of time online talking about making porn creatively and independently, sex as performance, authenticity, art and pornography, technology and sex, camming, censorship and the music of Fiona Apple.
Previous features include: Edinburgh Science Festival, Berlin Porn Film Festival, Scottish International Queer Film Festival, Shout Festival, Wonderlust Festival Helsinki, Uncensored Festival, Film Kunst Festival, IKON gallery, Cob gallery, Kings College London, Essex University, Oxford University Union, Camberwell College of Art, Porn Studies Journal, BBC radio 4, Know Wave radio and more.
