I shift histories and queer futures by working through things that matter, things that exhibit their matter, and the signifiers that connect these matters. That is, I work with words to map the intersection of emotionally, politically, or personally charged histories with embodied processes like ice melting, tongues drying, and fists clenching. This emotional, physical, and mental labor manifests as video, actions, equipment, and signage guided by instructional texts.
Things that matter which I've addressed include sexual violation, apathy about global warming, illusions of safety, and the role of movies in forming my gender-identity. Things that exhibit their matter that I’ve used include the elasticity of my tongue, 300lbs of ice, scissors, and the heat of the concrete of a Southern summer sidewalk.
I blend strategies of conceptual art, speculative fiction, and reenactment to queer the way words build reality. I construct a set of instructions to describe a problematic reality or close theoretical reading of a mass media object. I then deal in the small shifts in language that instigate large shifts in perspective. I investigate distortions of personal experience described into and embodied out of language and moving image.
