Pleasure and data? Is there such a rishta? We said yes, oui, haan!
How does acknowledging that young people want pleasure change the questions we ask and the research we do on their love/sex lives? Can taking pleasure seriously, transform the programmes, policies, curriculums and laws we create? #LoveSexAndData asked - is Pleasure the secret ingredient that data needs in order to be useful and relevant to our life and create a more just society?
The Love, Sex and Data Conference: A 3-day digital conference that took place from 7-9th October, 2021 was organised by Agents of Ishq and The YP Foundation to deep dive into these questions through keynotes, panels, workshops, performances, afterhours interactions and more!
3 days, 36 events, 60 speakers - thank you to everyone who joined us in bringing in the pleasure lens to our work (and our life!) as students, activists, educators, NGO workers, researchers, writers or really, whoever you are!
A first-of-its-kind conference dedicated to sex and pleasure in India? We said - you need to come ya (in more ways than one if you like *wink wink*) and you did - all 1663 of you!
Maya Indira Ganesh is a technologist and writer. She is a co-course lead of a new Masters program at the University of Cambridge on AI, Ethics, and Society. Prior to her academic work, Maya worked at the intersection of feminism, digital activism, and data politics in India, Europe, and SE Asia. Thus, her work across academia, civil society, and arts and cultural organisations bring questions of power, justice, and global inequalities to those of language, knowledge, and the body mediated by digital technologies. She lives in Berlin, Germany.
A former badminton player/dropout and coach, Dr Mitra is a prominent athlete rights activist and leading campaigner in the abolition of sex testing policies in women’s sport, working closely with affected athletes across Asia and Africa to enable them to address human rights violations in sports. Mitra was instrumental in helping Indian athlete Ms. Dutee Chand challenge the Hyperandrogenism regulations at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2014-2015, as the Government-appointed advisor to Chand. She was also one of the ten-member expert team who testified for South African athlete Caster Semenya at the CAS earlier this year. Mitra had been consulted on gender and sport issues and on issues of inclusion in sport by national governments, the International Olympic Committee, Council of Europe, Office of High Commissioner on Human Rights and has recently collaborated with Human Rights Watch to publish the most extensive research on lives experiences of athletes with variations in sex characteristics. Mitra is a Director and Trustee at the Centre for Sport and Human Rights in Geneva and is a member with the WomenSport International.
Sandeep TK works with the idea of human relationships and desire in the context of space, memory and time through his personal experiences, oral histories and the exploration of his identity and surroundings. His practice involves photographs, moving images and text, which often involve himself in them.
Vinit Vyas works on early modern and colonial visual & material culture of South Asia, particularly court and devotional painting traditions. He graduated in Art History from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda, and is currently finishing his Master’s from the same department. Apart from being a research associate at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bangalore, he has been a visiting & guest faculty at the NID, Ahmedabad. His research is interdisciplinary, and he delves into gender and sexuality, erotica, religious studies, languages, and history of emotions in Asian art. Currently, Vyas is co-authoring a catalogue on Rajasthani paintings and has also contributed a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume on the princely states of Gujarat.
#LoveSexAndData #LSDIndia
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