Eros Summit:
Embodiment of the erotic as precedents of soft-power and agency
“The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic – the sensual – those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.”-Audre Lorde
In post-industrial societies dominated by mass production and media, life is reduced to a series of spectacles, where direct experience is supplanted by representation. This phenomenon, termed the ‘Society of the Spectacle,’ results in a society increasingly fixated on processing and sorting data.
However, on the periphery of mainstream societal narratives, venues like strip clubs offer alternative modes of existence. Despite the strip club’s typology epitomizing female objectification, an exploration of a stripper’s nightly journey reveals nuanced moments of agency within the performance and embodiment of the erotic. Audre Lorde’s conceptualization of the erotic as a potent force, residing “in a deeply female and spiritual plane,” is central to this analysis.
Enter Eros Summit, a spiraling glass pavilion crowning a Hillbrow strip club, The Summit Club. It functions as a reimagined strip club experience, incorporating key elements of the erotic experience: desire as a return to authentic being, the unfolding of flânerie, and a connection with erotic mythology and fantasy. Positioned in the Johannesburg skyline, between the Hillbrow Tower and Ponte, Eros Summit proposes a new narrative – a recognition of feminine energy as a pivotal force in shaping the landscape of soft power for the future of African cities.
