The rules of the game

§ 1The subject

We reward porn as art — not in spite of the genre, but for what is achieved within it.

1. 1.1

   THE GOLDEN HOLE is an independent annual award for gay porn authors from the Post-Ost countries. It was founded by no studio, no platform and no state.

2. 1.2

   The subject of the awards is author porn: explicit work behind which stands one person with an idea and a gaze of their own, not an assembly line.

3. 1.3

   For us porn is a body genre in the film scholar Linda Williams’s sense: like horror and melodrama, it measures success by the response of the viewer’s body. Kant demanded that beauty be disinterested; a body genre is honestly interested. We do not count that as a flaw.

4. 1.4

   The awards show and publish nothing. The work stays where it was made — in the authors’ channels.

§ 2What the awards are not

This is not a beauty contest. We do not score bodies — we judge contribution, as a film festival or a contemporary art gallery does.

1. 2.1

   Looks, size, age, body type and “photogenic” appeal are not judged. A beautiful body is raw material, not an achievement.

2. 2.2

   Every niche is equal. Food fetish, mature men, leather, kink or vanilla — any of them can take any award. No fetish can lose just because it leaves the jury cold.

3. 2.3

   A fetish still matters: it is the work’s language and its pact with the viewer. The jury reads a work by the laws of its niche and from the standpoint of its audience — how precisely, boldly and inventively the author speaks to those it is made for, and what they reveal in the niche even to outsiders.

4. 2.4

   We do not sort work into “beautiful” and “ugly”. Since Karl Rosenkranz wrote his Aesthetics of Ugliness in 1853, art has known that the awkward, the rough and the imperfect can be stronger than gloss.

5. 2.5

   There is no scale of likes and no vote for the hottest photo. The only award decided by the number of votes is the Audience Prize, and it stands apart from the jury’s decision.

6. 2.6

   The awards are modelled on art institutions: the festival where a jury argues over a film, and the gallery where a curator answers for the choice. A decision is a judgement that can be read, contested and remembered, not a sum of points.

§ 3The direction

The awards stand where three lines of contemporary art meet: queer art, post-porn and metamodernism.

1. 3.1

   Queer art — from Tom of Finland’s drawings to Mapplethorpe’s photographs and Jarman’s films. A tradition that turned the hidden into a source of pride and the obscene into museum material.

2. 3.2

   Post-porn — a word from Annie Sprinkle’s performance work of the late 1980s: porn made not about people but by them, and aware of how it is built. The object becomes the author.

3. 3.3

   Metamodernism — the structure of feeling after postmodernism, described by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in 2010: an oscillation between irony and sincerity. We laugh at the ceremony of awards, and we hand them out in earnest.

4. 3.4

   These lines are a lens, not a required style. Naive work, camp, strict minimalism and plain documentary compete on equal terms.

§ 4Media and formats

No medium has an advantage. A phone snapshot and a render weigh the same when their decisions are equal.

1. 4.1

   The awards consider adult content in any art form: video, photography, GIFs and loops, drawing and illustration, digital and 3D art, NFTs.

2. 4.2

   Each format is judged by the laws of its own material — the principle of medium specificity. Video is expected to have an edit, a GIF a loop, a drawing a line.

3. 4.3

   A channel is a work too: series, diary and exhibition at once. Its author is artist, model and curator in one person, and a mix of formats counts as a device, not as disorder.

4. 4.4

   Budget and equipment are not taken into account. Dogme 95 showed that constraints give birth to style, not to poverty.

§ 5Geography

Post-Ost is not a state or an alliance but a generation and a way of looking.

1. 5.1

   Post-Ost — from Latin post, “after”, and German Ost, “east”. The space where, in 1989–1991, one era ended and ours began.

2. 5.2

   Authors take part from every country of the former USSR, as well as Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

3. 5.3

   Germany is the exception. In 1990 the GDR joined the Federal Republic, and its authors found themselves inside the Western market and its institutions overnight. Theirs is a different experience of transition.

4. 5.4

   Why a region, not the world. Larry Wolff showed that “Eastern Europe” was invented in the West as a half-civilised neighbour; Boris Buden, that “transition” became a permanent apprenticeship. This scene grew up without studios, and it must be described by its own laws, not measured against the Western industry.

5. 5.5

   Horizontal history, after Piotr Piotrowski: Post-Ost has no capital. The jury reads work from Tashkent and work from Prague alike — in one language of criticism.

§ 6Who can enter

The awards are for those who answer for the whole work — from the idea to the final cut or the last stroke.

1. 6.1

   An author is an adult who creates and publishes their own content. The camera and the brush may be borrowed; the gaze must be one’s own.

2. 6.2

   Only MSM creators (men who have sex with men). The term describes a practice, not an identity: no one has to call himself gay.

3. 6.3

   You may enter under an alias. In a region where the law calls queer life “propaganda”, anonymity is not a whim but a working condition.

4. 6.4

   Entry is free. A nomination cannot be bought: there are no advertising or sponsored awards.

§ 7Consent

The one border we do not negotiate. Everything else — subject, genre, how explicit — is left to the author’s conscience and taste.

1. 7.1

   Every real person who is filmed or poses is an adult and has given consent both to the filming and to publication. These are two separate consents, and both are required.

2. 7.2

   Characters in drawings, illustrations, 3D and digital works are adults and are depicted as adults.

3. 7.3

   Work involving violence, coercion or filming without the participants’ knowledge is not accepted. Dominance and role-play are allowed as long as the game has a clear, agreed edge.

4. 7.4

   You are the author of the work and have the right to it. The awards may ask for proof of age and consent; work without proof is withdrawn from consideration.

§ 8Entering

We ask for addresses, not files: the awards look at an author where they actually live.

1. 8.1

   Apply by direct message to the awards’ Telegram channel or by email.

2. 8.2

   The entry lists links to all the author’s channels and platforms, private ones included. The jury judges a body of work, so it needs to see all of it.

3. 8.3

   No files are needed. No video, photos or images are uploaded to the site.

4. 8.4

   One author submits one entry. Naming categories is optional — the jury sees for itself where the work is strongest.

§ 9Categories

The categories are not a ruler but a vocabulary: they name what is already in the work.

1. 9.1

   Principal awards. Author of the Year — for a body of work and growth from one piece to the next. Best Channel of the Year — for the channel as a complete work.

2. 9.2

   Roles. Active, Versatile, Passive and Dominant of the Year — performance awards for presence in the frame, on video and in photographs. A role here is not a sexual position but a way of being in the frame.

3. 9.3

   Special awards. The Audience Prize is decided by an open vote. The Jury Grand Prix is an award outside the rulebook: for a work, a gesture or an author that shifts the idea of the genre.

§ 10Three levels of judgement

The judgement is complex: the jury looks at the work, at the author behind it and at the mark they leave on culture.

1. 10.1

   The work — how it is made: seven criteria of craft and language, from idea to afterimage (§ 11).

2. 10.2

   Position — what the author stands for: their view of the body, the partner and the viewer, the values they declare and follow in the frame. The ethics of the shoot is part of the aesthetics, not an appendix to it.

3. 10.3

   Contribution — what changes thanks to the author: in the language of the genre, in the industry, in culture and in society. A new device, a new form of channel, new visibility for those who were used to going unseen.

4. 10.4

   No level outweighs the others. A flawless picture without a position is an advert; a bold position without craft is a slogan.

§ 11What is judged in the work

Seven criteria. Each is a question the jury asks of any work, from a loop to a channel.

1. 11.1

   Idea. Does the work know why it exists. A concept of one’s own counts for more than someone else’s trick done well.

2. 11.2

   Image. Light, colour, texture, space — what the surface of the work says before anything happens.

3. 11.3

   Structure. The dramaturgy of a scene, the composition of a frame or a sheet, the order of shots in a series: where tension goes and how it resolves.

4. 11.4

   Gaze. Who looks, at whom and by what right. In 1975 Laura Mulvey described cinema’s male gaze as a gaze of power; a queer frame can look otherwise — as an equal at an equal. We value those who can.

5. 11.5

   Rhythm. The edit, the loop, the sequence, the pause between posts. Whether every transition is earned.

6. 11.6

   Signature. Recurring decisions that add up to a manner — what the 1950s “politique des auteurs” found in directors working inside the genre assembly line. You know the author without a credit.

7. 11.7

   Afterimage. The after-effect: what keeps working once the work is closed. Roland Barthes called such a detail the punctum — it wounds and makes an image personal.

§ 12How it is judged

Not what is shown but how it is made. A good review of porn does not hide arousal behind jargon — it explains how the arousal was made.

1. 12.1

   The jury looks at the whole body of work, not the best post. One hit is chance; a line is authorship.

2. 12.2

   Arousal is a legitimate aesthetic response, not an obstacle to judgement. Susan Sontag called for “an erotics of art” in place of a hermeneutics; we take that literally and ask by what means the work acts on the body.

3. 12.3

   Looks, follower counts, views, income and advertising are not judged. Pierre Bourdieu showed that taste works as a border between insiders and outsiders; we try to keep money and reach from becoming that border.

4. 12.4

   The jury picks the category winners and the Grand Prix. The Audience Prize goes to the author with the most votes in an open vote of subscribers.

5. 12.5

   The jury’s scores and reviews may be published. The jury’s decisions are final.

§ 13Impartiality and presence

We hold a balance: we judge soberly, and we do not stop feeling. A cold spreadsheet and bare taste are equally blind.

1. 13.1

   Impartiality is a refusal of mere preference. In 1757 David Hume described the ideal critic: delicate perception, practice, comparison and freedom from prejudice. A juror sets aside their type, their fetish and their sympathies before opening the work.

2. 13.2

   But we do not retreat into formalism — a rubric in which the work is taken apart into items and stops breathing. Curatorial jargon that hides experience behind terms is exactly the “revenge of the intellect upon art” Sontag wrote about.

3. 13.3

   Personal dislike of a niche is not an argument. A juror to whom a subject is alien must see the work through its viewer’s eyes; if they cannot, they say so honestly and leave the score to their colleagues.

4. 13.4

   Presence is the jury’s right to look with the body. Merleau-Ponty showed that perception is never disembodied: we see with what we live by. Embarrassment, laughter, arousal and an unaccountable “yes” are not noise in a judgement but its data.

5. 13.5

   The formula for this balance is older than we are. Kant called the judgement of taste a subjective universality: it arises in one person yet addresses everyone. Barthes distinguished the studium — what you understand — from the punctum — what wounds. The jury owes both.

6. 13.6

   This is metamodernism in practice: oscillating between analysis and revelation without getting stuck in either. We are not a scoring machine and not a fan club. We are a few people who look closely and answer for what they saw.

§ 14The jury

Jurors are chosen not by title but by the ability to look and to write about what they see.

1. 14.1

   The jury is recruited from subscribers of the awards’ private channels through an essay contest. The topic and deadline are announced in the official channel.

2. 14.2

   The founders of the awards are honorary jurors.

3. 14.3

   Jurors receive a year’s access to entrants’ private channels — to see the body of work, not the shop window.

§ 15Awards

The statuette exists only in digital form. The award is a small fragment of aura in the age of endless reposts.

1. 15.1

   Every award is a collectible NFT on the TON blockchain, available in Telegram. Walter Benjamin feared that the technical copy would kill the work’s aura; the blockchain gave the digital object back a single owner, a date and a history.

2. 15.2

   Only winners receive an NFT, each with a design of its own bearing the statuette.

3. 15.3

   There are no metal statuettes and no cash prizes. The collection of awards is an open chronicle of the genre that cannot be rewritten after the fact.

§ 16Your data

We know exactly as much about entrants as we need to run the awards.

1. 16.1

   Entry data is used only to run the awards and is not shared with anyone.

2. 16.2

   Only a name or alias, the channel name and non-explicit material approved by the author appear on the site.

3. 16.3

   An author may withdraw their entry before the laureates are announced.

AaGlossary

The words the rules stand on. If you argue with the jury’s decision, argue in these terms.

Author porn

Explicit work by one author with an idea and a gaze of their own, as opposed to the studio assembly line.

Adult content

Explicit imagery for an adult audience in any medium.

Body genre

Linda Williams’s term (1991): a genre that acts on the viewer’s body — porn, horror, melodrama.

Queer art

Art that makes desires and bodies outside the norm visible and questions the norm itself.

Post-porn

Porn made by the people depicted in it, reflecting on its own conventions.

Metamodernism

The structure of feeling after postmodernism: oscillation between irony and sincerity, enthusiasm and doubt.

Medium specificity

The principle that every material has its own laws, and a work is judged by them.

Art institution

A festival, museum, gallery or award: a place where a judgement of a work becomes public and someone answers for it.

Position

The view and values an author asserts through the work — and keeps to in the frame.

Contribution

What changes thanks to the author: in the language of the genre, the industry, culture and society.

Niche

A fetish, practice or type with its own audience and its own laws. All niches are equal in the awards.

Audience

Those a work is made for. The jury weighs their view too, not only its own.

Impartiality

A judgement free of the judge’s own type, fetish and sympathies.

Formalism

Taking a work apart by items and rubrics until it stops breathing. We avoid it.

Presence

The jury’s readiness to take in a work with body and feeling, not only the mind.

Subjective universality

Kant’s notion (1790): a judgement of taste is personal in origin yet addressed to everyone.

Studium

In Barthes, the cultural, intelligible interest in an image; the counterpart of the punctum.

Channel

An author’s feed as a complete work: series, diary and exhibition at once.

Post-Ost

The countries of the former USSR and the former socialist bloc in Europe, except Germany; the shared experience of a generation after 1989–1991.

Horizontal history

Piotr Piotrowski’s approach: an art history without a centre or provinces.

Author

The one who creates and publishes the work and answers for all of it.

MSM

Men who have sex with men, regardless of how they name themselves.

Consent

A free, informed and separate “yes” to filming and to publication. It can be withdrawn.

Body of work

Everything an author has published in a season, considered as one whole.

Gaze

Not sight but a position: who looks, at whom and by what right.

Punctum

Roland Barthes’s notion (1980): a chance detail that wounds the viewer and makes an image personal.

Arousal

An aesthetic response considered base for far too long. A body genre measures success in pulse.

Essay contest

How the jury is recruited: a seat goes to whoever writes best about what they see.

NFT

Non-fungible token: a digital object with a single owner, a date and a history.

Aura

Walter Benjamin’s notion (1935): the unique presence of a work here and now.