“Irresistible” Film Screening by Philadelphia Red Umbrella Alliance

Philadelphia Red Umbrella Alliance will be screening “Irresistible”, a film by Mistress Velvet and Barbora Kleinhamplová. Panel discussion to follow.This event will start with a screening of “Irresistible”, a film by Mistress Velvet and Barbora Kleinhamplová. Attendees are also welcome to read the following interview of Mistress Velvet: “Caretaking in so many ways: a conversation with Mistress Velvet” before the event. Mistress Velvet identified as a Black queer, marxist, sex working organizer who dedicated their life to collective liberation. The roundtable will be a discussion between three Black sex workers on the themes that emerge for them.

Seneca Joyner is a world historian of cities, sentiment, and modernity whose scholarship focuses on Black women’s geographies of livability and liberation in Latin America. Her organizing has centered on the decriminalization of abortion, disability, poverty, and sex work for decades and, as an anarchist, she is committed to achieving collective non-state solutions to this state and social violence.

Ava, also known as Ava Kane, is based in Philadelphia. Originating from strip clubs and transitioning into dominatrix work, Ava has been part of the sex work industry for over 10 years. Her years of work and relationship building has led her to be a current member of Philadelphia Red Umbrella Alliance.

Z.U.I. is a member of Philly RUA, multidisciplinary artist, doctoral candidate of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and 2021-2023 Carter G. Woodson Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia. She engages Black material and digital publics as landscapes to trace the human sexual geographies between the relation of the Black femme and spectator. Their relationality is tethered to the logics of shame, desire, and pleasure. She uses Black gender and sexuality analytics to engage Visual Culture Studies through the logics of Black Studies and Black Porn/Sex Work Studies. Ibaorimi specializes in performance, haunting, Black queerness, ontology, horror, flesh, sonics, the human and deviant modalities of Blackness.