“A lab is such a slutty place. If you put a woman with huge fake tits in a real laboratory, it instantly looks like a porn set.” The Danish artist Maja Malou Lyse is calling in from an elegant palazzo in Venice, but she’s remembering a very different visit to the world’s largest sperm bank – located, by chance, in her hometown in Denmark – where the line between cold, scientific reality and erotic fantasy wears particularly thin.

“There’s the donation booth, which is this dark little room with a leather couch and a screen, automatically [showing] Pornhub,” she says. “Then, on the other side of a very thin wall is this big laboratory, with workers in lab coats, long gloves, and goggles. They’re opening cryotanks and steam is coming out like in a bad sci-fi movie.”

The artist’s initial visit to the facility, Cryos International, was based on an unusual request. Three years ago, Lyse explains, the owner of the sperm bank called her out of the blue: “He told me, ‘I have 20 litres of sperm that I really want to give to an artist, and you seem like the right person to call.’” In case you’re unfamiliar, this should give you some idea of Lyse’s work over the years, which has included oversized dildo sculptures, a vast archival project on ‘Page 9’ newspaper nudes, and a TV show on the Danish national network DR, titled Sex with Maja. Even so, she says: “I was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’”

In the end, she never ended up doing anything with the 20 litres of sperm, but her visit to the headquarters provided a different source of inspiration, in the form of a scientific study linking the consumption of virtual reality porn to increased sperm motility (the ability of sperm to ‘swim’ effectively toward an egg). This real research forms the basis for Lyse’s new exhibition Things To Come – pun intended – which explores a fictional future where VR porn “saves the world” amid a global collapse of sperm counts and a broader male fertility crisis. Curated by Chus Martinez, the show is presented at the Danish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.

“He told me, ‘I have 20 litres of sperm that I really want to give to an artist, and you seem like the right person to call’... I was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’”

Porn – and the technology used to consume it – is both “toxin and antidote” in Lyse’s imaginary future, where the boundaries between scientific rationalism, gender politics, and erotic content are even more blurred than today. “I sometimes call the film a bimbo sci-fi,” Lyse says. That’s not to say that Things to Come is hard sci-fi (well…). It doesn’t take place in a distant future world, or in space, but it extrapolates today’s biological anxieties and tries to imagine a potential solution. “The sci-fi cinema tradition is humans trying to aestheticise their fear of the unknown,” she says. “We use images to try to control the narrative when things are, in reality, out of our control.”

In the case of Things To Come, the near-future narrative involves a major shift in power dynamics, as porn stars become essential to the future of the human race. This puts them in a position of “extreme authority” – they control the futuristic sperm banks we depend on for survival, indifferent to many of the moral concerns we find ourselves grappling with today.

On large-scale screens that play with the architecture of the pavilion, we get to see a variety of perspectives from people working in one such facility. Do they occupy a utopia or a dystopia, or something in between? Lyse describes it as “both and beyond”, adding: “Do I want to live in a world where VR porn saves humanity? No. That doesn’t feel very utopic to me. That sounds terrifying. But I like the idea of porn stars ruling the world.”

The film was partly shot over Christmas in an Orlando, Florida laboratory belonging to the Danish cryosperm bank, starring the adult film actor Nicolette Shea (a “major icon” in the industry) as well as Kira Noir, Abigail Morris and Kayley Gunner, who represent a “new generation” of performers. Casting real, mainstream porn actors was part of the plan from the beginning, Lyse explains, with Shea at the front and centre of the artist’s vision after a meeting at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas. “I totally connected with Shea, and was obsessed with her,” she says. “She’s so camp, and so tall, and her personality is so big, and her ass is so big.”

Made in collaboration with DIS, the production also featured unexpected musical elements, as well as a model who stands in for the male gaze that’s implicit in the vast majority of mainstream porn. “It’s important to me that feminist porn is part of the movement,” Lyse explains. “But I don’t feel like I’m in a position to change or disrupt porn. I know we have this idea that artists can change the world, but unfortunately I really don’t think we hold that power. Also, I’m not entitled to disrupt the porn industry. I’m not part of it.” 

“We talk about Venice being the most-visited exhibition in the world. Maybe it has one million visitors over the course of several months. But that’s what porn sites get in ten minutes.”

Instead, Things To Come explores a different aspect of the phenomenon – one that touches almost everyone’s life, regardless of whether they love or hate mainstream porn as it exists today. “The project points at image consumption, and how images shape our perception of ourselves, each other, and the world around us,” Lyse says. “Mainstream pornstars are, in a way, the ultimate embodiment of that.” Presenting the exhibition at Venice adds an extra dimension to this conversation. “We talk about Venice being the most-visited exhibition in the world. Maybe it has one million visitors over the course of several months. But that’s what porn sites get in ten minutes.” (At the 2024 Venice Biennale, ticket sales actually clocked in at 700,000.) “I thought it was really interesting to bring this vulgar, extreme image consumption into the art world.”

Of course, the Venice Biennale also comes with its own set of negotiations. For example, VR headsets were out of the question due to practical reasons. “That queue would be insane.” But Lyse also knew that she wasn’t going to bring straight-up, hardcore porn to the Danish Pavilion. “The film is sexy as hell, and it has this eroticism, but there’s no explicit nudity,” she says. “There’s no sexual acts. There’s no orgasming. It’s very conservative porn, if someone calls it porn.” In theory, this helps deflect accusations of “empty provocations” and leaves room for ideas with a bit more “meat on their bones” – like our shifting perceptions of what images can do, and how we ourselves can be changed by the images we consume.

“The porn industry has written the scripts for a whole generation’s sexuality and desire. It’s such a powerful image system.”

We might need sci-fi to project our anxieties about uncertain futures, but we don’t need to look any further than the current trending videos on porn giants like Pornhub to see the influence of images playing out in real time. “The porn industry has written the scripts for a whole generation’s sexuality and desire,” Lyse says. “It’s such a powerful image system.”

Does this mean, heading into the future, that VR porn could actually hold the power to save the world? “It probably won’t,” she admits. But we are already seeing a shift in how we regard images, from mere representations of the world to forces that act within it, ranging from internet memes, to AI slop, and yes, porn. “We stand at this tipping point where our relationship to images is being changed forever,” she adds. And this feels like something art should be perfectly poised to address, even if it can’t actually change the world.

The Danish Arts Foundation presents Things To Come at the Danish Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from May 9 to November 22, 2026.