Talks

Porn Against Cisness
at NYU’s Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies
New York / March 14, 2025

Free with RSVP!
Tickets and more info here

A growing divide between queer, trans and feminist studies and politics mirrors the large and dangerous inner divisions of today’s liberation movements. As film scholars and practitioners, we believe that one of the sites of pleasure where shared political and erotic desires can meet is that of porn.  

The event Porn Against Cisness puts into conversation practitioners and scholars whose practice is informed by the emancipatory and ethical potential of porn. Aorta Films produces queer porn with a feminist ethics and J Szpilka is a cultural anthropologist specializing in queer theory and practices of BDSM.

We invite you to a night of screening and discussions of the potentials of queer porn for liberatory feminist politics.

Panel: “Porn Studios Today: WTF is “Ethical Capitalism”!?”
Berlin / October 23, 2024
Part of the Berlin PornFilm Festival‘s “Adult Industry Only” Days
Featuring Panelists: Jiz Lee (PinkLabel.TV), Inka Winter (ForPlay Films), Carmina (Carre Rose Films), Sarah Meisinger (Lustery), and Paulita Papel (Lustery, HardWerk), Moderated by Mahx Capacity (AORTA films)

Panel: “Reclaiming my Space in the Pornosphere”
Berlin / October 22, 2024
Part of the Berlin PornFilm Festival‘s “Adult Industry Only” Days
Featuring Panelists: Bishop Black, Mahx Capacity, Diosa Mor, Robin Astera, Zaawaadi

NEW INC’s DEMO Festival 2024
Full Overview here
New York / June 5, 2024
Talk: “Co-Creating a Future of Ethical Fuckery”
Exhibit: “Who’s Afraid of Pornography?”

Expanding on the New Museum’s commitment to new art and new ideas, NEW INC is the Museum’s cultural incubator supporting creative practitioners and small businesses working across art, design, and technology.

As the culmination of Year 10 of the incubator, DEMO Festival 2024 presented talks and exhibitions from the program’s participants.

See Mahx Capacity’s 7-minute talk “Co-creating a Future of Ethical Fuckery” in this video, and see more about their installation “Who’s Afraid of Pornography?” here.

Panel: “The Sextech Founder’s Journey: How Sextech Alum are Reimagining Sex & Technology”
Online / October 2, 2023
part of the Reimagine Sexuality Technology Conference
featuring Mahx Capacity, Bo Bonilla, Steven Beith, and Lisa Kinsella

“Censored Pleasure:
Porn, Free Expression, & Sexual Freedom”
Online / May 22, 2023
presented by The Woodhull Freedom Foundation
featuring Mahx Capacity and Amber Mallery

Pornographic content is some of the most popular content online – it’s also the most rigidly censored. However, most porn is protected by the First Amendment and is a valid form of free expression. For this program of our Censorship Series, Mandy Salley will sat down with two pornographers and sex educators to talk about porn, gentrification, sex work, and censorship. Indie Pornographer & Creative Director of AORTA Films Mahx Capacity and Sex Educator & Researcher Amber Mallery joined for this scintillating conversation.

Watch the talk in full, here on YouTube!

“Let’s Get Nasty:
Resisting the Gentrification of Pleasure with Porn Literacy & Sex Education”
Washington, DC / March 9-11, 2023
presented by The Sexology Summit for Pleasure Professionals
featuring Mahx Capacity and Amber Mallery

This counterpoint discussion, speakers Mahx Capacity, founder and Creative Director of queer/trans porn studio AORTA films and sex educator and TedX speaker Amber Mallery MPH, CSE will explore the definition of “ethical porn,” and react to the trend of gentrifying sex and pleasure by divorcing it from “nasty” pornography and explicit sex. The discussion will also cover the important yet imperfect relationship between sex education and porn as Mahx and Amber address the present strategies that may be undermining the good intentions of our collective work as pleasure professionals towards bringing pleasure, good sex, and consent-based relationships to the masses.