"A Feeling of nervousness is normal"

Video and audio loop. Text taken from an online dating tutorial. London, 2014

press release accompanying exhibition - Camberwell, UAL, London 2014:

Objects are continuing about their daily business.

The shot lasts a voyeuristic moment too long.

We notice a quivering, not of fear, but nervous anticipation.

A voice, clear to the point of piercing, advises:                                                      

“A feeling of nervousness is normal.”

A delicate sheet of plastic shivers, and curls up a little.

Bristles twitch.

Cobweb-like threads tremor.

“Try to enjoy it.”

Conveyer belts slip past one another.

Bottles exchange fluids.

“Empathy is a two way process.”

- - - - - -

I had sex with a chair the other day. It was hard.

Smooth and inviting curves of firm wood became a cold and rigid functional structure. My partner was inanimate.

- - - - - -

Reality flickers between material and Spectacle. What is one second an object of sexual desire is, the next second, just an object - a material form (human, espresso machine, whatever).

Human sexuality is confused. The representation of goods as sexually alluring in advertising stimulates a corporeal lust for objects, while sexual objectification in mass media has informed an increasingly fetishistic type of desire between humans.

We expect an operator’s manual to come with either.

- - - - - -

In a society that increasingly reflects the neatly labeled and packaged goods it dotes on, dirt is whatever cannot, or actively will not be categorised. Dirt, it seems, is damned to constant social abjection. Celebrating dirt is rebellious.

Celebrating dirt is hopeful.