If Desire was a picture, what picture comes to your mind?
A shimmery amorphous mass of fairy dust floating in the starry sky of a black universe leaving an incense of powerful orgasms?
A primal erotic energy that flows freely where it will?
Or something mysterious hidden in a locked box?
Or a grim picture painted for you by a painter’s whose hands know nothing of art?
Or not an image at all, but a deep breathy moan that gives you delicious goosebumps?
This year, at Adventures Live, we want to explore Desire and the exciting journey of it. When do we first become aware of our sexual desires? What is the first societal messaging we internalize about desire? What discoveries do we make about our desire? How did we discover our Desire?
Desire is a powerful transformative energy, and coming into awareness of our own Desire is a Journey – a necessary Journey of discovery that requires much sifting and sorting. This is a sifting and sorting that allows us to learn the unique language and feel of our own desire, thus learning to know and accept self through our unique Desire. It is a sifting and sorting that teaches us how to pursue, with honesty and courage, our unique Desires, teaches us how to express it, and finally, to appreciate ours’ and others’ unique languages of desire, and share in it if it is our Desire to. For every person, this Journey is unique. Reflecting and appreciating this Journey – learning what our Desire likes to dress up in, how it likes to be touched, how it likes to laugh – is our chosen focus for Adventures Live 2020.
After years holding a virtual space for the sexual stories of African women from across the continent, we have had the blessing of sharing in the powerful Desire Odysseys of African women who discovered their unique Desires and are no longer ashamed to explore it in a world that for instance, demonizes a woman’s sexual desire, or criminalizes queer Desire.
Adventures Live 2020 hopes to capture the magic of the diverse sexual journeys of Desire, and to celebrate the diversity of the Journey and the diversity of Desire. Throughout this journey, we will reflect on:
a. The wider social and political impact of Desire. If embracing Desire makes us feel good about ourselves, how does this spill over into the communities that we are in? How does it influence how we relate to others? Or conversely, how does suppressing our desires affect those around us?
b. What influences our desires? On multiple levels – interpersonal (in relationships) and societal, that is, the wider community that we live in and are citizens of?
c. How do we build self-awareness and self-acceptance of desire?
d. The effects of societal perceptions on individual Desire and the multiplicity of Desire
f. De-stigmatizing Sex & Desire – Real Desire versus the Performance of Desire
g. Toxic desires & Societal taboos
Through workshops, panel discussions, heart-to-heart conversations, art and music, Adventures Live 2020 will be an exciting Odyssey of Desire! In a world racked by the biggest crisis to hit humanity since World War 2, the era of social distancing has challenged us to re-imagine and reflect on Desire without the intimacy of touch. People all over the world are forced to engage in deeper reflections of intimacy and desire, and to be more creative in re-imagining ways to pursue and satisfy sexual desire, and we seek to capture this. So join us on our Odyssey of Desire. Hop on our Desire Odyssey time travel machine, as we forage in the wild bushes and universe of Desire, as we feel all the feels, as we journey into our joys and our traumas, as we share those feels, and as we re-imagine the exciting new realms of Desire in a post-Covid 19 world.
This year, we encourage you to think a little more consciously about how the different layers of your personal experiences; your childhood, your relationships with partners as you get older, and the social/political dynamics of the communities around you— constantly interacts to influence your experiences of desire.
Here’s a prompt that we’ve created to help you delve into the depths of your desires.
Our erotic journey begins. Welcome aboard!
