Liberté From Prudeness

By Amelia Vedgren

Art By Lauren Mallett

During the summer of 2024, I was in Amsterdam. At the suggestion of a friend, I went to see an exhibition by Albert Serra at The Eye Film Museum based on his 2019 movie Liberté. The museum describes it as offering a “bewildering total experience, blending theatrical and cinematic elements, inviting visitors into a world reminiscent of the vibrant landscapes of Rococo painters Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher, combined with the contemporary atmosphere of cruising zones. Amidst the grand projected scenes from Liberté, Serra engages participants in a captivating game of observation and participation, exploring the essence of ‘ultimate freedom.’” Throughout the display I found myself put off by my discomfort and sexualization towards naked bodies, which was a fairly new feeling to me.  Growing up in Finland, nakedness is rarely connected to sexual desires. This piece contemplates nature and nurture, finding balance between them through the lens of my eyes. 

Finland to Florida

A customary day, sitting in a sauna, surrounded by family and friends. In the blue and white, green and gray, the colors of my motherland. Searing summer, biting winter. At home, grandmother’s backyard, or a friend’s cabin. Forever in joy, occasionally in sorrow. Sometimes alone, sacredly as one. Naked, sweat dripping, skin to skin. Hitting each other’s backs with bath whisks picked up from backyard forests. Catching gasps from each other when someone threw too much water on the stove stones. Grabbing one’s arm and pulling them to plunge into the lake. Parents watching over, smoking cigarettes and playing poker. 

Sex was only a thing between lovers, nothing to do with nudity or parts of Her. Body is a vessel, to wrestle and feel the pressure from uphill runs and laser tag guns. My mind grew up on thoughts of this, never to think it was His. 

I moved away from home when I was fifteen. Five thousand miles with my eyes closed to keep each tear composed. I took my culture with me, until my first roommate screamed at the glimpse of my bare breasts and knees. Confusion took over; what did I do wrong? “It is only my thong,” I told her. Later being chastised for walking down the street, and being advised not to, I soon realized, in this country, my body was prized. Uncomfortable comfort to endure the madness, was this the beginning of my prudeness? 

Eye Film Museum Presents Liberté by Albert Serra 

A dark hallway, on a somber day. The ground beneath sucks my shoes into the dirt as sticks crack under my soles. I hear a woman grunting, and a few hunting slaps. My eyes wander toward the light in front of me, afraid to look into it. The screams roar through the empty air, silencing into whispers of mercy and despair. The scent of aged wood and faint incense wafts through the corridors, mingling with the subtle musk of velvet drapery that lines the characters. It’s as if I have crossed a threshold into a realm suspended in time, where the past whispers its secrets and shadows dance at the edges of perception, committing a crime. Rustling leaves, the distant call of nocturnal creatures, out of discomfort, pulling my sleeves. The whim of the wind through the trees mingles with the murmured declarations of the libertines. Their voices are low, conspiratorial, unspoken desires foreshow their quest for unrestrained freedom from the chateau. Controversy ate my mind, why does this feel so unkind?

There are three screens in front of me, filming a woman spanked by a man, from triad perspectives. Other men, hiding behind trees, touching themselves, to see how it feels. My steps roam through the room, am I a fool to come and see something so cruel? There is another woman, touching herself. Her feet perched on a stump, crouching over, circulating her pelvis on it. Slipping her left fingers beneath her corset, sliding the right ones towards her hidden interior. The audience is subjected to her groans and moans, frozen on her climax. I ridicule myself for the role I play, amongst associating objectifiers, yet none of us look away.

A man lying on a tapestry. Disfigured face, missing a nose, lost grace. Another woman walks up to him, squats over his torso, and lifts her skirt. Her flesh displayed on every screen, taking away from the moreen. She relieves herself on him, all the way from abdomen to chin. His arm poked by a chalice, molding his face in satisfaction. Attraction of abstraction. Repugnance shivered my body, awfully gaudy, yet everyone looked at that oddity. In disbelief of my reaction, where can I find the thief of my nonsexual taction? Was it gradual how natural became a grueling counterfactual? 

Forgot all that I saw or heard, except the blur overpowered by heart slurs. Beating through my chest, at least it is letting my words rest. My knees crumble down, all of a sudden, my eyes don’t catch anyone around. The lights go off, silence. 

Watch 2: Liberté of Decadence and Desire

A palpable tension in the air, a charged atmosphere with the electricity of forbidden desire. A desire to know more. The lights began again, recasting and reconceiving the scene anew. These renegade aristocrats of pre-revolutionary France exude a languid grace as they indulge in their hedonistic fantasies. There is a beauty and intimacy to their interactions, almost intrusive to witness, I am drawn in. A silent observer to their revelries. My heart races in time with their whispered conversations, furtive glances. The rustling of their garments against the forest floor and boundless possibilities. Immersed in a world where the boundaries of morality and freedom blur into a haze of sensuality and excess. To explore the unknown, test the limits of obscure and suppress. 

Psychological and moral ambivalence, vigilance was only made for the impotence. Contradictions and hypocrisy of our times’ plutocracy. The need to show it all, wasn’t for the philogyny to fall. Rather to sprawl and enthrall the picture where human nature doesn’t need a coverall. Impulse and corruption, how one’s mind is in disruption. A living pulsating entity, inviting me to explore what was once lost, it was my prudeness that it cost. What does it mean to be truly free, if there is no way to feel and peel from the genteel?