Fluff

2018

Fluff, 2018, HD video with sound, 4 minutes, 16 seconds

Fluff is a video performance referencing the rituals of comfort we enact in our private spaces. Inspired by DIY instructional videos and Martha Rosler’s seminal video work, Semiotics of the Kitchen, I reflect on the question “how to self-care?” Taking the form of a how-to, I present every pillow in my home and proceed to fluff each one. In-between footage of this action are scenes of my partner massaging me. Both the pillows and myself become objects to be “fluffed” and made more comfortable. The title of the work further references the act of “fluffing” in pornographic films where a male actor is kept aroused between cuts. Nothing in the video is done in a naturalistic or arousing way – instead, all of it exists within an obsessive state of anxiety. In this work, I present myself as desperate to be comfortable.

Installation View, La Esquina Gallery, Kansas City, MO (photo by EG Schempf)

Stills from Fluff

In the spring of 2020, two stills from the video were included in Urgency Reader #2, published by queer.archive.work.