From almost the beginning, almost all life on this planet has turned like a wheel. At the hub... relentless survival. The driving spokes... nourishment, reproduction, and pleasure. For the human species, there's one more spoke... recognition, by self and by others.
The sex drive for pleasure is at the start and end of all life, and evolution in its time-gorged rolling search for mechanisms of survival selected sex as the most efficient process to spur reproduction and thereby survival of the species.
From almost the beginning of organized human social life, it was apparent that he who harnessed the sex drive, harnessed enormous power. And it was harnessed! 
Primarily by men to control other men, to control women, to produce labor, to produce possessions, to produce other pleasures.
Historically, this power is at the core of all political systems. It fuels and continues to fuel the major religious institutions which perverted evolution's simple natural reproductive selection into a nightmare of denial, self-mutilation, and pervasive despair. It divided the human species into artificially contrived genders, pairs, and self-destructive relationships. It created the most horrific slander of the human image... rape.
Yet... despite this history of ugly distortion, sex has remained a self-contained pleasure, often an enhancing spice in love, reflected and explored in the Arts and expressed in the beauty of dreams and in the sensuality of recognition.
In this special issue, from Andrea Kapsaski's perspective on erotica in cinema to Iri Kopal's portraits of timeless sexual innocence, Scene4 presents a selected menu of views on the art of loving... ars amandi.

The Editors