NSFW: Sext Me Maybe?
Send Me Your Sexts One Year Anniversary and Release Party
Words by Brit Bachmann + Photos by Corie Waugh
Send Me Your Sexts is an ongoing project by filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian, “who’s convinced that your dirty messages should be [her] next script.” For $80, Eileen professionally reenacts sexting conversations up to 6 minutes long with a professional cast. December 13, 2014 marked Send Me Your Sext’s one year anniversary. To celebrate, they hosted a multi-disciplinary party at Redgate and debuted a new video.
The evening started out more mellow than expected from an event promising burlesque and wet dreams. When Vandocument arrived, only eight people were at Redgate, huddled in pairs in each corner of the room.
Posses started trickling in after an hour. Although the increased attendance ought to have brought enthusiasm to the party, clouds of nervous and insecure energy joined the purple haze hovering above their heads. Projected behind vacant instruments on stage were the previous Send Me Your Sext videos on loop. Every 5 minutes an actor would orgasm on screen and as if deliberately trying to mask climaxes, conversations in the room became louder and more hysterical. This rhythm of nervous energy and hysterics continued until rockabilly music cut the conversations and the first dancer appeared. Still frigid and uncertain, the audience created a wide half-moon circle around the dancer to watch in near-silence her performance. The more she sauntered, the more the audience loosened. Near the end of the performance, people started clapping and whistling encouragements. Finally, it had seemed, the audience lost their shells.
This was not the case, however; as the loop of older videos continued on screen, the room seemed to segregate with men on one side and women on the other. This party felt more like a middle school birthday than a satirical celebration of adult sexuality.
The videos themselves are brilliant. Playful and imaginative, the Send Me Your Sexts shorts have a DIY aesthetic that perfectly suits the outrageous sexting subject matter. With Valentine’s Day approaching, a Send Me Your Sext reenactment of intimate texting seems like the most ideal and authentic expression of modern-day romance. Who needs Hallmark when we have YouTube?
Over the course of the night the vibe improved radically. Performers included Go-Go Grrls, Calamity Kate and Ginger Avenue, and live music by Dream Cars, Sex With Strangers, Girlfriends And Boyfriends and Doppleganger. The bands where especially lively, echoing the themes of the night both in name and lyrically. The audience started dancing and flirting, allowing themselves to riff off the excitement of the videos.
Eventually, as if the evening itself had reached orgasm, Eileen Yaghoobian debuted the newest video, Sara and Dean March 2014.
For more information on Send Me Your Sexts, links to additional videos and instructions on how to submit your own sexts, click here.
