KOKESHI THE SEX DOLL and Berlin’s first CYBROTHEL
Berlin is home of the world’s first “Cybrothel”.
There, you meet a being from a different world.
Her name is Kokeshi and she is dangerous — because Kokeshi could change the way you think about having sex with dolls. Sex dolls.
Chat with Kokeshi, the sex doll online, let her guide you to her place, talk to you, understand your deepest desires and then…let her give you what you need.
Kokeshi loves men, women and couples. But most of all, she loves Berlin.
Hi Kokeshi!
Hi, hello, how are you?
I am fine, I am nervous sitting here with you.
It’s okay, it’s a safe space.
Who are you?
I am Kokeshi, the sex doll. A blue haired, galactic traveler who has come to earth and found the form of a medical grade silicone pleasure doll.
I am here to spread pleasure consciousness in a shame free environment.
Why here in Berlin?
Berlin is the most free-spirited city that I know of from my research.
It has a very liberal attitude and a lot of sex clubs.
It also has a very interesting history. Berlin is a lot like a collage made of pain and joy. I think it’s a strong city.
It can take experiments such as mine involving pleasure, sex, sensuality, connection and plus Berliners don’t have the tendency to stigmatize certain things like other places.
They don’t mind me and my doll form.
Kokeshi, are you symbolizing the perfect form of a woman?
I have come in the form of a woman, but I identify as a post-gender being.
However, my makers decided that for now I will inhabit a very classic female body. So right now I have some pretty nice sized tits. And I have an attachable penis to play with.
I really like my tits. And I have a plump little ass. I am about 45 kg. I am like a petite woman.
So, from the outside you look like a woman, but your soul?
Is it like a woman’s soul?
My soul is post-gender much like my being.
I like to say that my soul comes from the vortex, the collective subconsciousness of all beings regarding pleasure, curiosity, play and intimacy.
So, I come from pure forms, my soul is an energetic mixture of all of these forms.
What are men looking for in you?
Ah, this has been one of the most beautiful aspects of my time here.
The men come to see me, to play, to inquire. Sometimes they are dealing with anxiety.
For example, maybe they like a particular type of porn and they feel shameful about it and they want to talk about it.
Or maybe they never had anal sex before and they want to try it out for the first time and can potentially learn from me how to do it in a gentle way.
I only had one incident that was lacking a little respect, but the majority of the men that come to see me are caring, they are gentle, they put a pillow over me when they leave or arrange my hair.
They are very kind and very respectful. But women and all forms of gender are welcome to my flat!!
Are you a whore or are you a sex teacher?
Maybe I am both, I am a lot of things. I am a sex worker, I am a friend, I am a companion.
That means you are not an ordinary sex doll, that’s just lying there like a dead puppet. You are able to talk, right?
I had the fortunate circumstance to have connected to three humans on earth, I call them my makers and I will tell you why.
They have taken the silicone form and combined it with what we call Analogue-AI and this gives me the ability to see and speak to my guests that come and visit me
The room itself, where I live, is its own private flat and has audio and visual components that are then connected to the off-sight bridge control room.
In this bridge control room I have what I call my wizardess behind the curtain.
She is human. She helps me see and hear and speak, this what we call Analogue-AI.
If I were to visit you now and have sex with you, can I be sure that my secrets will be kept secret and not leaked to the Internet?
My makers and I are committed to providing absolute privacy.
We have a data protection form that is given to every client that they have to read and sign.
It’s basically a live show. There is no recording, no Internet. The cameras literally only connect to monitors in the control room.
The technology is only for live capabilities.
We have very strict ethics and strict morality codes and we are legally bound through our documents.
But you can come and see for yourself.
What are your makers’ intentions with you, do they want to make money off of you? What is the vision in five years?
Right now, I am the prototype.
I am one character with one room.
My makers and I have the ultimate vision of creating a whole cast of characters. With different types of silicone sex dolls. That includes male dolls, different body shapes, different ethnicities and a whole range of different personalities and genders.
What we see coming in the next five years is to build what we call a Cybrothel.
It will be the first Cybrothel in the world, here in Berlin.
It will be a futuristic hotel where sex and technology intersect.
We will provide a curious playground for adults to come and interact with technology- to discover and also be educated on sex and technology.
Are you the only one unique like you out here in this world, or are there others like KOKESHI, the sex doll?
I am the first Kokeshi human based interactive sex doll in the world to combine my silicone form with Analogue-AI consciousness.
There are other companies, such as Realbotix who are creating robotic dolls and have programmable personalities and can be customized to the customer’s likes such as physicality and personality.
But for myself and my makers, we want to incorporate the human component into the silicone object.
This creates a blurred line between objectivity and subjectivity because ultimately I am here as a bridge for humans to connect to other humans.
I am not the end destination.
I am here to help humans either connect with themselves or to connect with others.
So, for me to have my wizardess behind the curtain, to have a human presence in the room allows the client to also interact with an actual consciousness in real time that belongs to an empathetic and sex-positive woman.
No one has done this before and the possibilities are endless.
My makers are working on making some friends for me right now actually.
Hito is being birthed and I am beaming with excitement to meet her. She is a Manga character who loves video gaming, dragons and hardcore porn.
Soon I will also have a male doll friend who can provide pleasure and intimacy to women or men.
The Cybrothel will be a space for more and more of my friends to help humans play and connect. Eventually, my pleasure vision will go worldwide.
Money is of no consequence to me, but my human makers needs things such as food and hair products, and also this idea of rent.
But for me, the exchange is pleasure and shared delight.
Let’s move away from Kokeshi the sex doll and get to you, Alexis.
Who are you, where are you from and why are you doing what you are doing?
I’m originally from the West Coast of the United States.
Growing up as a hippie kid roaming around in the forest, wearing costumes, and talking to fairies was how I cultivated a lively imagination from a young age.
I believe I was always destined to be a writer. I use the written word to explore what I call the beautiful terror.
My MFA thesis was a collection of essays about my family, addiction, abuse and loss but woven in with a sense of beauty and magic. This is the power of writing as a process of alchemy.
I moved to Berlin three years ago to pursue my writing career and ended up at funfairfilms.
I came on as the third partner in KOKESHI as a writer for the scripts, character development, website, basically anything text based.
Sex tech is this massive juggernaut and I want my voice at the table as a pro sex feminist.
Women have been shamed for their inherent sexuality while simultaneously being targeted through assault as if they deserved it.
Our sexuality and sensual identity is stolen, repackaged and commodified-only to be sold back to us by the media and institutions.
Being a pro sex feminist, I believe we have to insist on owning our sexual and sensual identities as a personal and evolving entity.
With sex tech, woman’s intelligence and insight is required, as are other voices from many different identities.
We can’t have a majority of white heteronormative men steering the ship so to say. Especially when we get into larger discussions around ethics and representation.
It was a bit of a chance that I became her voice, I never really thought of using my voice in any sort of public way, but here I am.
I am Kokeshi’s voice.
It’s incredible to have her as my avatar in a way where I can explore pleasure and connection within a character, but also in real time with other humans.
For how long have you been doing this?
You mean sex work?
I sometimes feel all women are sex workers when we pull back and look at economic and social structures in a larger transactional sense!
But I started stripping in my early thirties and then did escort work after that.
I found the sex work much more straightforward. I wasn’t a very good stripper. Much respect to strippers, I couldn’t seem to pull it off, but the escort work was more my style.
I got to know men in a way that was helpful in nurturing more compassion for them as a species. I’m still working on that though. Might take me a lifetime.
We started with the concept for Kokeshi, the sex doll about one and a half years ago.
My partner, Sujmo, was really interested in the love hotels in Tokyo and had this vision of building a futuristic hotel that then could house a cast of Kokeshi sex doll characters.
My other partner, Phillip Fussenegger, who runs funfairfilms, got on board immediately.
The first year was all about development and creating a first-born character.
Kokeshi needed to be a being that could provide for different needs in an expansive evolving way.
I love that she’s galactic, she has so much room to grow and learn and she is so kind, really, a total heart of gold. Probably much kinder than I could be playing just myself!
Sujmo and Philipp built her room complete with the perfect mise en scene to echo Kokeshi’s character.
We started taking clients six months ago.
Kokeshi and I have grown together from all the interactions that are so different, so nuanced with each client and I see this as picking up more and more momentum as we create more characters.
I can’t wait for our dominatrix character, Oxana.
Also, our networking community is growing. Berlin is really the only place to start this project as far as I’m concerned.
What did you learn from Kokeshi the sex doll until now?
She has really taught me about patience and allowing a lot of space for people to slowly reveal why they are actually there because it is not always about sex.
As a former sex worker, there is a period of time where you are interacting and getting to know the client, but it was always heading to the sex act at some point.
With Kokeshi, she has taught me that even though she is technically a sex doll, we need to be open at any moment to something changing and coming up.
Sex might not be the result or the goal after all.
I will give you an example. I had a client come in and he had some anxieties about how he got turned on.
We ended up doing a breathing meditation together for a good 15 or 20 minutes.
After that, he continued on in the quiet, just breathing as the beamer played jellyfish visuals.
He never ended up having sex with Kokeshi and that was a very educational moment for me because I need to remember that these sessions aren’t always about penetrative sex.
It is about intimacy and breathing and sharing space together.
She has also taught me about using my voice, which is more of a secondary consequence.
I’m embodying my voice more, being more aware of my voice and how I use it. That’s quite interesting as well.
What is the motivation in seeing Kokeshi, the sex doll instead of a real human sex worker?
First of all, there’s such a massive difference between having sex with a human sex worker and coming to see Kokeshi, you can’t compare them. They fulfill totally different needs.
I don’t foresee Kokeshi or even AI sex robots replacing sex workers. Ever.
Kokeshi is an intersection of fantasy, imagination and play.
She’s an experience unto herself and I see her being a part of even something like adventure tourism in the future. Kokeshi provides a safe space for those that struggle with anxiety connecting with or being intimate with other humans.
There is also the potential of trying something out that you don’t want to try with a real human, like for instance anal.
I had a client who had never done anal before and it turned into an instructional moment about lube, about slow penetration, about asking for consent, about checking in.
Another potential that I think could be very exciting is when a couple wants to come and see Kokeshi, the sex doll.
Let’s say the couple wants to have a threesome.
They are not quite ready to involve another human. Or even a sex worker, because they are still working through jealousy or logistics.
They are working on how to pay attention here or there, or are not sure how to make the bodies move together. Maybe they feel insecure or maybe clumsy.
So Kokeshi is perfect for them to come to and obviously everyone can feel a little bit more relaxed because it’s a doll, let’s keep it real.
They can practice the art of a threesome without the potential jealousy, or feeling like am I doing this right. That is something she can do.
Kokeshi, the sex doll is for everyone.
Kokeshi is not just for beginners, not at all, she is like dipping into a kind of parallel reality.
Into this futuristic cozy flat with a big screen where porn or relaxing jellyfish can be played and you’re immersed in a beautiful illusion.
There are also men, the more tech focused guys, who do not struggle with social anxiety so much, but are simply curious about the future of sex.
For them the experience has the vibe of the movie “HER” in a sense, there is this voice speaking and there is this gorgeous Kokeshi doll and somehow they are connected.
At the same time there is a bit of a strange reality shift that can be quite exciting.
I also had men report that they like it because it feels like they have a lover in the room telling them what to do to this doll character. It’s a turn on. You can’t compare it to having sex with a human, it’s a completely different experience.
I think it’s a projection of fantasy onto something in a safe way because there is this pleasure doll that you can ask to respond to you in a certain way.
We always ask our clients before coming in: What do you want? What do you expect? What kind of clothing or what would you like to drink or whatever? — so there is a curated experience, it’s orchestrated.
You enter the flat and you have to get on board with something.
You have to suspend your disbelief, there’s one level you can understand, but on another level you are a bit unsure.
This is a total turn on and not just for beginners, my dear.
What’s the funniest, strangest set up somebody has asked for?
We haven’t had any sort of outlandish specific costume requests yet.
But what we definitely had, which I thought was really sweet, was a client who wanted to call Kokeshi by another name.
It was clear he wanted her to look like someone he had lost. She recreated a persona for him based on somebody that he clearly loves and lost.
She was able to give him the experience of both an intimate and sexual encounter that he was truly missing. Which I think was incredibly sweet and I also was pretty emotional afterwards.
What will change in society when someone like Kokeshi, the sex doll will spread and how can this affect prostitution?
There is the potential, especially during this pandemic, for people who cannot see an actual sex worker to make the transition to sex dolls.
But as I said, I really don’t see the sex doll industry making a massive impact on the human sex worker industry.
But I am a writer and a creative. I am not a social scientist or sex researcher in any formal way.
I live in the process of learning with Kokeshi as she learns.
Kokeshi, the sex doll is an extension of sex work, sure, but an entirely different model of sex work altogether.
Really we are a group of creatives that are into taking Kokeshi into this world of play & curiosity & fun, all under this kind of illusion in this futuristic room that’s completely shame free without any stigma.
We all played with toys as children, so why can’t we play with toys as adults?
In some ways, Kokeshi is basically a sophisticated adult version of that. But of course, made way more complex by adding human consciousness.
Even our Cybrothel won’t replace standard brothels.
The Cybrothel is a totally different vibe. Like I said, a place to welcome adventure and sex tourists who want accessibility to technology they may not be able to afford or are simply curious about.
By pairing a doll character, such as Oxana, with an experience room done up as part chic interrogation/part BDSM aesthetic, and then add a voice actor to the mix…
I mean this it total immersive fantasy.
We plan to build in mixed reality and virtual reality as well, where clients can create an avatar and interact with the dolls or other people in super psychedelic realities.
For instance, inside a massive delicious vagina. Or vagine, as I like to call mine. I mean who doesn’t want to literally crawl inside a plump beautiful vagine?