“Since when did nudity become a bad thing?”
Project PC
We live in a society which flies flags of inclusivity and acceptance. Almost anything which is accepted in the private space is also permitted in the public space.
Yet attitudes towards nudity and sex remain frictional, with nudity often associated with the sexualisation of one’s body or mind.
Nudity is readily and easily consumable; on the internet, in magazines and in advertising. But real life nudity, outside the comfort of the private space, is not readily accepted, and in many cases is perceived as a threat.
Project PC is a liberalist movement that wants to help establish the nude body in the public space as a means of promoting self and wider acceptance. We use our naked bodies as tools to provoke social change and challenge societal norms.
We embed partially or fully nude models into everyday public situations with the aim of exploring:
• the perceived and realised reaction to public nudity, particularly the disconnect in this between genders
• the idea of the human body as an object
• societal constructs and what informs our views of right and wrong.
Project PC is a sex positive, love-your-body supporting and pro ‘harm principle’ movement. We don’t attach labels to groups or individuals; instead believing in meritocracy, radical inclusion and immediacy.
Our events are a mix of artistic performances, social studies and self-propelled private experiences. In some cases we attempt to use our performances and studies to support other causes, such as anti-slavery or body confidence.
Mostly we just aim to have fun. There are bigger things in life to worry about. Nudity isn’t evil - we enjoy participating in our public performances and studies and aren’t ashamed to admit that!
Our Beginnings
Project PC started out as a group of university friends. We’d all been ‘outdoor adventure’ athletes at university, and had spent many a weekend changing in front of each other at the side of a road , or in communal bunk houses. We had been brought together from different European countries and, although none of us had an issue with nudity, the difference cultural perspectives of it was interesting.
Nothing much happened for a long time. Some of us life modelled, some of us skinny dipped and some of us did nothing. We weren’t naturists; we didn’t ‘enjoy’ being naked but we just didn’t see the issue with it.
In 2017 a couple of us met up in Finland for an entirely unrelated event. Back in the UK an NHS nurse had recently been ‘uncovered’ as a porn star, and lost her job as a result. We found this ridiculous; what the nurse got up to in her spare time was no-one else’s business, and it certainly didn’t affect her ability to carry out her job. We’d already been skinny dipping and camping naked, but inspired by the nurse’s story we started to take things a little further. We walked down countryside roads naked and sunbathed nude at a textile beach. No-one really seemed to take any notice. After a few drinks the plans became bigger, and Project PC was born.
At this stage it was really just like any drunken plans with your friends; none of us really expected it to go anywhere. However, after researching it further, and achieving a small amount of funding, it started to sound more achievable.
In May 2018 we reunited in Barcelona, Spain for our first ever proper performance social study, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The rest, as they say, is history.
What Next?
Our performances and studies have originally been carried out in areas we understood to be more liberal, and we have used a particular demographic of model. The aim of this has been to test the waters and establish a solid base.
We’d now like to start working with a wider range of models, in both liberal and less liberal areas. We’d like to repeat some of our old studies and performances, and we have ideas for new ones too. We have a range of ideas we’d like to explore, requiring either partial or fully nudity. If you’d like to get involved then please contact us.