COMFORTING TECHNIQUES
The acronym of BDSM stands for SaDo Maso Bondage and detects the world around sadomasochistic submission or domination practices. Without getting into these activities which history is as old as human being, the most interesting aspects to me were both the psychological and aesthetical ones. Differently to what I could have expected as a lay person, attending these settings I observed a paradox: there was no aggression nor abuse behavior among the people that use these practices. I’m talking of what I’ve seen, of course, but if you go into a nightclub, worldwide, tension and overbearing, in sexual approaches for instance, are definitely higher and often harassing.
On the other hand, these events are attended by people that have explicitly the same drives and the atmosphere is much more laid back.
What touched me the most was the caring aspect, of tenderness and welcoming that always intersperses and ends this kind of practices. From which the title, Tecniche di Consolazione (comforting techniques). So, it was clear to me that at least one of the main keys of those exchanges was an emotional relational model like a mother-son, parent-child, one. Therefor punishment, forgiveness, love, attention. It is probably psychobabble, but this is the aspect that touched me and that I tried to portray avoiding voyeuristic seductions. There is a beautiful and very sad song by Lucio Dalla that said: “hurt each other in order to sweetly forgive each other”. A phrase that impressed me the first time I heard it as a kid. And that now acquires an extra meaning.
