GegenPower — GEGEN BERLIN

What is power?
Is it the ability to do something or act in a particular way?
To influence the behaviour of others or the course of events?
Is it physical strength? Electricity? A superpower?

Most of us struggle constantly with power. We strive to find, increase, and express our power, avoid being overpowered, and want to be empowered ourselves. In turn, playing with power can also be an exciting, erotic experience. When we get turned on by playing with power we get relief from the tedious, everyday battle for power and find creative new strategies to explore being more or less powerful. Playing with power is like playing with fire. It can be destructive, but with awareness and care it can be a beautiful, warming, and healing experience.

Does power turn you on?
Do you like to play with power?
Do you like to feel powerful?
Do you like to feel powerless?
Do you know how to empower yourself?

We have been raised to think of power as something scarce: if I have more power, someone else will have less. So to increase my power I need to take some of yours. The way I get to feel big is to make you feel small, and the way I get to feel secure is to make you feel insecure. This kind of power – power over – is achieved by belittling others. This is the basis of all rigid hierarchies – with fascism, sexism, racism and homophobia being just some extra ugly examples. The thing about power over is that it doesn’t work. I cannot build a solid foundation of internal security, self-esteem and empowerment by stealing yours. Power is not a scarce commodity, no matter what we are told or tell ourselves.

There is not just one kind of power.
I have the power to refuse your power.
I have the power to share my power or to give it up altogether.
The more power I choose to give away, the more I have too.
I am empowered by my choice.

What is more powerful than power over is power with. By sharing our power with one another, we get more power ourselves. Power with is shared power built on trust, respect, mutual support, solidarity, empowerment and collaborative decision making. Power with is linked to social power, the influence we wield among equals. By powerfully consenting to giving up their power, a bottom lends their power to the top, the top adds power, and together they make a lot of voltage. After all, it doesn't take much of a top to dominate a wimp.

Power with is based on the idea that we can all become more powerful by helping each other to be more powerful. By ethically playing with power, we share power. My desire, my plastic cock, my prosthetic masculinity can circulate and be shared without the pleasure becoming any less powerful. It’s the opposite, in fact: sharing multiplies the power of desire, sex, and gender. Paradoxically, power with is more powerful than power over but also more fragile. We live in a world of power over, desire a world of empowerment, and we get there by traveling through the land of power with.

GEGEN invites you to be powerful with – to play with your power, share it with others, and get turned on by all the powerful energy produced by our exchange.

Emancipate yourself from power over others.
Embrace power with others.
Empower yourself.

GEGEN POWER

concept courtesy of Sir Rita & Flo Heiden
photo courtesy of Florian Hetz
graphics & logo by Enrico Bardin

Video teaser by Chase Mohrhardt Becsey
Cast: FUCKART & LEATHER FREE WOLF