My research proposal is part of a wider process I’ve long engaged in within my practice: to redress poetry from materials that I took from the places where I’ve worked — saunas, sex shops, nightclubs — which serve as both sheltering and experimental spaces that help shape queer communities.

My work not only emulates information about these places, but it is also made with material that belonged to these places. I often collect items intuitively, and, by doing so, I linger on both their functional and broader semiotic meaning. My approach to my research, alike the work itself, centres not just on collected information but also on collected presences, not only as a participant but also as a facilitator within queer spaces — almost as an anthropological researcher.

The works I create emulate an experience using the waste of experiences themselves – extending life from death. Within the queer community, this has many implications: we can think of ostracization, migration and disposal in many contexts.

My aim with this programme is to expand the perspectives from where I see myself collecting, archiving and presenting these materials from their source, and the ways in which I utilize these materials to reflect on their source: to expand on the relationship between (homo)sexuality and waste, from the trash in the woods to the feelings of discardment in different moments of crisis.

For this project I am creating two moving image works which are connected by ideas around hygiene and cleanness.