thread: 2005-08-30 : Jonas on LARP Sex
On 2005-09-02, John Kim wrote:
I went to an Ars Amandi workshop by the inventor of the technique, Emma Wieslander, during my visit to Knutepunkt 2005 in Norway (cf. my Knutepunkt 2005 Report). My brief description was:
A workshop by Emma Wieslander on her famous "Ars Amandi" method for simulated sex in a larp. It is described in other places, I am sure, by people who can do it better justice than me. The exercises were in groups, trying out touching only the hands and arms in a sensual manner. The group I was with were seven men and one woman, which meant that a certain degree of homophobic tension was fairly palpable. Nevertheless, everyone took it quite seriously and did their best. One person said he was uncomfortable with it and bowed out but was quite polite about it.
I think something in common with Ars Amandi and Meg's ritual post is emphasis on what is really, physically happening for the participants—i.e. lighting the candle, and so forth. A lot of tabletop RPG discussion gets sucked into thinking only about what is happening in principle in the imaginary space.
One interesting issue with Ars Amandi is how to interpret it in-game. In Wieslander's famous "Melan Himmel och Hav" larp, the method was in-game. That is, for the science fiction creatures that were being played, that was how they really had sex. But as Jonas mentioned, it is also possible to map it to real-world sexual acts.
