Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol ("This is not a rape")

Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol (This is not a rape) is a video work of performance art by American artist Emma Sulkowicz. The artist's first piece of art was a performance of a mattress (Carry That Weight), which consisted of Sulkowicz carried a mattress everywhere she went on campus during her senior year, in protest of sexual assault on campus and the university's handling of a complaint she filed against her fellow student who she claimed anally raped her. The university cleared the student of responsibility; the district attorney's office declined to pursue criminal charges, citing a lack of reasonable suspicion. Video shows Sulkowicz having sex in a Columbia University dorm room. It was filmed by artist Ted Lawson in 2015, while Sulkowicz was in her final year at Columbia University's School of Visual Arts. Art work illustrates the transition from consensual to non-consensual sex. About three minutes into the video, a man beats Sulkowicz, removes a condom, and then anally penetrates her while she screams and tells him to stop. When the man gets out of bed, Sulkowicz curls up in the corner and lies motionless before getting up to wrap himself in a towel. Artist is challenging the viewer/reader to understand not the difference between an actual rape that happened to her and a simulated rape in the video, but to understand the difference between their own definition of rape, how they’ve applied it to her, and what rape actually is. Sulkowicz insists the video is not a reenactment of her alleged rape in her Columbia dorm. It's only a reenactment if you disregard my words, she writes. It's about you, not him. She says the video is more about how people view her and shape things into their perception of the world, how viewers of artworks treat art; whether subjective definitions of rape are useful or objectively true; the public narrative that if a rape is found by an investigative body not to have happened, it automatically means that no consent was violated, regardless of the victim’s opinion on the subject, and whether or not those members of the public or of the investigative body were there; how the public tends to treat rape victims; the sensationalized, titillating way the public is willing to interpret rape; the relationships and differences between art, pornography, and rape; and on, and on, and on. If you watch this video without my consent, then I hope you reflect on your reasons for objectifying me and participating in my rape, for, in that case, you were the one who couldn't resist the urge to make Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol about what you wanted to make it аbout: rape. Please, don't participate in my rape. Watch kindly.