Mindf*ck 2026 by Feeld | Exploring Intimacy

Let go of answers. Seek experiences.

Getting intimate with intimacy

Is your idea of intimacy really yours, or something you were handed? Mindf*ck is a day to examine the lines we’re told not to cross—and whether we want to redraw them. Clarity comes in the form of questions, not answers. Because in 2026, there is no universal solution to navigating relationships, connections, and desire.

11.11. 26 | 11 a.m. - midnight | Hammer Museum | Los Angeles

About the event

The contributors

Leading voices from therapy, performance, research, and culture. A full day of generous, vulnerable, and deeply human conversations.

Who’s going to Mindf*ck?

Academics & Experts
Artists & Cultural tastemakers
Founders & Futurists
Feeld members & Guests

Our philosophy

No friction, no spark.
In a time when optimization has flattened intimacy into a tired script—partnership, exclusivity, finding “the one”—Mindf*ck brings tension back into the room.

Examine, consider, and question. Sometimes curiosity itself is the answer you’re looking for.

Our Partners

Content Highlights

12:15
Who Profits From Bad Sex?
Cindy Gallop
From mainstream porn to dating apps (hi, it’s me, I’m the problem), the industries shaping our sexual expectations don't always have our pleasure, safety, or wellbeing in mind. But what happens when we build better models of intimacy into the systems themselves? Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn works from within the world of sex and technology to challenge harmful narratives and create more positive possibilities for human connection. Together, we'll explore what it takes to build a sex-positive industry rooted in consent, pleasure, and real human experience and why giving people better models of intimacy, from the everyday to the experimental, might be the most radical step we can take.
12:30
The State of Dating: Narrating Our Desire
Dr. Justin Lehmiller, Sy Dusk, Alyssa Shelasky
What if the most revealing truths about our romantic and sexual lives aren't found in what we say, but in what we do? Drawing on research from Feeld and the Kinsey Institute, this conversation offers a rare look at the desires, behaviors, and surprising contradictions shaping modern dating. What are people secretly searching for? Where do our stated preferences diverge from our actual choices? And what emerging patterns reveal how we might align the two to live more authentic lives? In this session, Kinsey Institute research fellow Dr. Justin Lehmiller, Feeld Senior Product Analyst Sy Dusk, and The Cut journalist Alyssa Shelasky decode the data behind modern desire and what it tells us about everyone else, and ourselves.
13:15
The Limit Does Not Exist: How Radical Relationships Reveal Our Potential
Alok Vaid-Menon, Kat Blaque
What can “normies” learn from pioneers at the growth edge of relating? Relationship anarchist, artist and poet, ALOK, and BDSM expert and sex-positivity advocate Kat Blaque have built their lives and work around challenging conventional ideas of how we're supposed to live, love, and express ourselves. Moderated by sensuality doula Ev’Yan Whitney, this conversation asks what we can learn from those pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and how questioning the rules of relationships might help us build more intentional, expansive, and fulfilling lives on our own terms.
14:30
Masc Off
Shaun Galanos
Are men ok? Well—were they ever? Recent media coverage of concepts like the male loneliness epidemic, incels, “gooning,” and others have fixated on the idea that something new and untoward is happening to men today. But masculinity has long been a fraught, fluid concept, one that eludes easy categorization.

Bringing together relationship educator Shaun Galanos and a panel of other men will interrogate the expectations men inherit, the emotions they're taught to suppress, the intimacy they struggle to cultivate, and the freedom that might come from rewriting the rules. What does it mean to be a man when everything we thought we knew about manhood is up for debate?

15:45
Are We Over-Therapizing Intimacy?
Dr. Orna Guralnik, Karley Sciortino
The proliferation of “therapy speak” continues apace every day; our contemporary common vernacular includes phrases once only spoken in enclosed spaces under patient-client privilege. But has all this self-awareness actually made us better at navigating connection? Or have we turned intimacy into an endless exercise in self-improvement? In this conversation, psychoanalyst and Couples Therapy star Dr. Orna Guralnik joins sex and relationship columnist Karley Sciortino to interrogate the rise of therapy-speak in modern dating. From the weaponization of boundaries to the pressure to find a perfectly healed partner, they'll explore whether our obsession with understanding love is getting in the way of actually experiencing it.Tags: Experience
17:00
Words of Affirmation: The Art of Articulating Desire
Miranda July with Haley Mlotek
How does a writer, or an artist, or a philosopher, find the words to make desire legible? How do they manage to capture our contemporary experiences of sex, sexuality, and intimacy—intractably complex encounters that always elude the very best attempts at understanding—and do so in ways that are undeniably recognizable, expressively beautiful, and both reflective of our times while also inspiring or predicting new ways of living in them? We are all influenced by the expectations, roles, and structures that are our cultural inheritances, and it is in a writer’s singular attempts at critiquing or fictionalizing them that readers can find new ways of seeing themselves. Artist and writer Miranda July and author and editor of AFM Haley Mlotek will draw on their own practices across a multitude of forms and genres to explore what happens when we learn to accept that there are no rules— only suggestions—for how to love; that there are no boundaries—only ideas—for how to express the contradictions of desire in life and in art. From within the constructs of politics and power as well as art and creativity this wide-ranging conversation on heartbreak, eroticism, fantasy, and liberation will be an invitation to rewrite and reimagine the myriad possibilities of desire itself.
18:00
Denier Salon
Mindy Seu, Alice Scope, Haley Albert
Part literary salon, part social experiment, DENIER is an intimate gathering that explores the erotic power of storytelling. Guests are invited to take the stage – or rather, the bed – and share sixty seconds of confession, fantasy, poetry, or personal revelation.

Blurring the boundaries between performance and vulnerability, DENIER asks what happens when we make our private desires public. Equal parts provocative, playful, and unexpectedly tender, this participatory experience invites us to reconsider what makes something erotic—and whether the most intimate act of all might simply be telling the truth.

Afters with Club Kid and A24

Celebrating the release of A24’s Club Kid, enter a scene worthy of Jordan Firstman’s triumphant feature directorial debut. A day of thinking draws to a close with an invitation to dance your way to openness and connection at The Afters, with a special DJ set soundscaped by Saturn Risin9, actress and recording artist featured in the film.

Creating a safe space together

By attending this event, you are agreeing to our community, consent, and safety guidelines. Our intention is to create a safer and more inclusive space for our community.

Active consent: Both online and offline, active consent is a cornerstone of Feeld. It is a “yes,” freely given, without coercion, manipulation, or while incapacitated. It is a “yes,” made intentionally, by a person who is informed about what will and will not happen in an exchange. It’s a “yes” that can be retracted at any time.
Inclusive: Feeld and Mindf*ck is a place for all humans to feel safe exploring their desires. In this space, we approach each other with openness, curiosity, and respect—regardless of difference. Feeling seen and respected is a fundamental human need. As we pursue it for ourselves, we extend the same grace to others.
Private: Revealing ourselves to others is deeply personal. Sometimes we feel comfortable sharing, and sometimes we don’t. We get to decide how, when, and with whom, we share ourselves. Privacy doesn’t contradict our authenticity, it lives alongside it, as we pursue honest, meaningful connections.
Authentic: We are who we say we are. In this space, we’re real people bringing as much of ourselves as we want to each interaction. Doing so allows us to form more intimate connections—not only with others, but with ourselves.
Safer: If someone makes you feel unsafe, we want to know. Please report any harassment, abuse, threats, discriminatory behavior, or misconduct that you witness or experience by emailing [email protected], or speaking with event staff.

Notice of filming and photography

By attending this event, you consent to being filmed and/or photographed that may be used for marketing or promotional purposes by Feeld without compensation.

Prefer not to be captured? Tell our staff, or email us.

About

Feeld is a dating app on a mission to elevate the human experience of sexuality and relationships. Since 2014, it’s created inclusive spaces both online and IRL, where people can feel safe to express and explore gender, sexuality, and desire outside of existing blueprints.

Mindf*ck is an extension of Feeld’s daily practice: imagining a world where everyone is more intimately connected to each other and themselves.

Common questions. Clear answers.

Plan your visit. If you’re a confirmed ticket holder, we’ll email if anything changes.

We suggest arriving at 11:00 a.m. to get checked in, explore the space, and grab a good seat. Sessions begin at noon.

Press & media

Mindf*ck is a one-day intimacy forum by Feeld, bringing together artists, practitioners, researchers, and cultural thinkers for candid public conversations about desire, identity, connection, and the stories we rarely say out loud.

Event: Mindf*ck · Format: one-day forum · Date: November 11, 2026 · City: Los Angeles · Audience: 18+ · Venue and final attendance figures: Confirm with the press contact before publication.

Press contact

For press inquiries contact [email protected]