RACHEL GARFIELD

Art Sex Work is a nuanced reflection on sex work.  It is constructed through rhythmic editing, montaged and manipulated image and sound that traces some of the ethical complexities of the sex debates and its connection with disability through interviews with sex workers and found footage as well as filmed footage with actors and quotes. Taking footage and imagery from the contemporary moment and back to the early 1970s it builds a complex interlinked image, formally and conceptually of a particular cultural debate. The interviewees are in effect speaking back from today, to the twentieth century artist and filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin who inspired the film. Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2020) was a polio survivor and wheel-chair user and often worked with sex workers as actors in his films, one of whom, Cosey Fanny Tutti is in this film.  The film is organised through the loose thematic groupings of – joy, pleasure, frustration, debt, labour. and layered collage that, in addition to the interviews, comprises drawings, found footage from 20th films, found sound, footage shot by Dwoskin and shot footage by Garfield and a second sex worker interviewee.