Van Darkholme
American performance artist and gay porn director-actor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Van Darkholme (born October 24, 1972) is a Vietnamese American performance artist, gay porn actor-director, and photographer.[2] He is among the few Asian American men working in Western gay porn as a director and actor, although he primarily works in niche bondage pornography.[3]
TDN Kosugi
Van Darkholme | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | October 24, 1972 |
| Other names | Van-sama TDN Kosugi |
| Height | 1.83 m (6 ft 0 in)[1] |
| Website | www.vandarkholme.com |
Career
Before 1999: Modeling and acting
Van began working in a corporate job, and became a masseur to earn extra income.[1]
He then worked as a fashion and photographic model, also pursuing photography as a hobby.[4]
He had minor roles in the movies The Adventurers (1995), in which he played the role of Xiao Hei, leader of the San Francisco-based Vietnamese Black Tiger gang;[5] and Who Am I? (1998), in which he played Takashi (uncredited).[6][7]
1999–2007: Fame and recognition in gay porn
Van's first porn video was TitanMen's 3 Easy Pieces, which was shot in 1999 but released in 2001;[8] while the first to be released was Can-Am Productions' Lords of the Lockerroom (2000).[9] Muscle Bound Productions' White Rope (2001), featuring bondage, was the first video he wrote, directed and produced.[1]
In the documentary 101 Rent Boys (2000), that explored the lives of male prostitutes in Los Angeles, he had appeared as a "Japanese 'slavemaster' in full fetish regalia" (#90).[10][6] In it he mentions that he wanted to be a movie star, but when he didn't find success, he started doing escort work and became a "dungeon master".[11][12]
In just a couple of years in the gay porn industry, Van became "the world's biggest gay Asian porn star".[13] In 2002, he attended the Nation.02 gay party in Singapore held on the occasion of National Day,[14] and an Internet auction for "Dinner with Van" fetched $12,000— with 100% of the proceeds going to Action for AIDS (Singapore) and other development programs for the GLBT community.[15]
Van, a shibari aficionado, started utilizing this Japanese style of tying in his bondage and photographic work in 2004.[4] In 2006, Bruno Gmunder published a book of Darkholme's bondage photography titled Male Bondage: Art Deserves a Witness.[16][17]
2008–present: Kink.com and other appearances
After reading an article about Kink.com, Van— who had been a BDSM enthusiast since the mid-1990s[18]— contacted the founder Peter Acworth;[19] and in 2008, the company launched a gay bondage site named 'Bound Gods' with Darkholme as the director, under a new gay-focused division, KinkMen.com.[20][21]
Van gained further recognition as a bondage master after he started working for Kink.com.[22][23]
In 2009, his photographic work was featured in visual artist Trevor Wayne's self-published magazine Pin-Up Show.[24] Paul Chan made a drawing titled Oh Van Darkholme as a part of his Sade project in the same year.[25]
Van appeared as himself in an episode of the TV series BadComedian in 2011.[6]
He also starred in the documentary Kink (2013) about Kink.com. In it he mentions how corporal punishment in Catholic boarding-school education planted the seed of BDSM for him,[26] and that he grew up fantasizing about whipping the muscular football players he saw on TV.[27] Describing his relationship as a director with models who take the submissive roles in his films, he says— "I respect and love the subs when I'm working . . . I care for them a lot."[28]
He started streaming on Twitch in 2020, and started a YouTube channel as well.
In popular culture
Van became famous in Japan as an Internet meme, after a clip from his gay porn movie Lords of the Lockerroom was posted on Nico Nico Douga in 2008. He was nicknamed VAN-sama (Japanese: VAN様) by his fans. He also had another nickname, TDN Kosugi (TDNコスギ), because his looks resembled Kazuhito Tadano (who was called TDN) and Kane Kosugi.[29]
Deep Dark Fantasies, a 2017 visual novel about a pornstar who runs a BDSM dungeon, was inspired by fan-made mash-up videos of Darkholme posted on Nico Nico Douga. The main character Van is a loose amalgam of Van Darkholme and the characters he has played on screen. In his review, Dan Starkey from Kotaku criticized the game for misrepresenting kink.[11]
