Spray

The silver pipes are hung low, away from the ceiling. There’s a little nozzle right there, near the bend. I stand directly underneath it, looking up into the aperture. I am waiting for the spray. I understand that this is a stupid thing to do, but I miss smoking. I hear it first, hissing. I swear the pipes are rattling. Then I see it. Little curls twisting. Then a huge gust. Like the bubble vent in a jacuzzi, I’ve got my face pressed right up against it. Like some spaceship decontaminant bay, like a rainfall shower, like i am being hosed down, doused. And I am huffing up the fog, deep breaths in the misty haze. It is cool, thick, creamy rich smoke. It smells like lynx body spray, my first crush, boysboysboys — and something else. Something sweaty. Skin or heat. A body. Salty. Sweet. Warm. Crevice.

The smoke is loaded up with chemicals and pheromones. Androstenone is a pheromone found in boar saliva. It’s used by pig farmers, to bring their sows into heat, or detect an optimal breeding window. The farmers administer this pheromone through a spray. It’s meant to make you feel intimidated, awestruck, generally and inexplicably aroused. Oxytocin is known as the love hormone. It’s produced in the hypothalamus, stored and released into the bloodstream via the pituitary gland. It influences social recognition, relationship formation, long-term emotional attachment. This smoke is a love potion.

The recipe comes from a discord server made up of men who want to fuck women, but don’t really know how to negotiate the intuitive and unspoken social processes that would manouevre them closer towards the fuck. The artist, Ella Fleck, infiltrated this Discord server. She posed as a fictional man called Jonathan Michaels. Jonathan is obsessed with a fictional OnlyFans cat girl called Gisele. Jonathan wants to fuck Gisele. Jonathan wants advice from the chat. The chat wants to oblige. Love potion.

I step out of the jet stream. I exhale, heavy. Smoke pours out of my nose. It is surprising, I put my face back in. I can hear video game gun fire, first person shooter backing track. Someone is speaking. Computer music. I close my eyes.

The internet is awash with magical thinking. The Tiktok for you page is literally for you, and my algorithm knows I am a woman 25-30 living in a city. Every so often it will offer up a video with a magic sound: use this audio, interact three times and he will text u back/declare his love/ur dreams will come true/ur life will be different in 24 hours x. Or a video with someone shuffling through tarot cards saying ‘DON’T SCROLL, there are no tags no trending audio, if this video finds you it was meant for you. I’m pulling this card for you. This is your card. The Lovers. THE LOVERS!!! Wow. WOW!! This is so rare. Something so special is coming your way! To claim it, comment I CLAIM THIS ENERGY FOR MYSELF in the comments and make sure you like—-‘ Last weekend my Mum sent me a video on WhatsApp with an AI robot voiceover explaining how all the planets were going to align, super-celestial-cosmic power, all your manifestations will be put on turbo-boost so make sure you manifest good things. Money-money-money-and-true-love etc. I like reading my horoscope. It is like dense, cordial, ardent poetry. When we get Chinese chips on deliveroo, I always smash open the fortune cookie first: YOUR HEART’S DESIRE IS WITHIN REACH! or YOU ARE HEADING FOR A LAND OF SUNSHINE! The internet is awash with magical thinking, and everyone’s using it to get laid.

I kind of don’t mind the (moral, ethical, political) murkiness of this love potion’s origin. I don’t really think about it. Apparently one of the incels on this discord server got done for pumping it through a building’s air conditioning unit. It doesn’t cross my mind or enter the room. I am thinking about magical love potential and world peace. This is the only format, the only room where this love potion could be chaotic neutral. It’s almost sweet. All the wishful thinking, all the best. I emerge from the fog, for real this time, because it’s burning my nostrils and I’m starting to gag. The gallery is full of smoke, the door is open and it’s pouring out onto the street.

I remember reading this book called Oval by Elvia Wilk. A young couple in Berlin move into an experimental gated community on an artificial mountain. The lad works for a tech startup/speculative Pharma company and he invents a pill called Oval that makes people generous. When people take it they give away all their posessions and laugh and then society falls apart, the artificial mountain community crumbles. I remember a group show at Sophie Tappeiner in Vienna sometime around 2019. Candace Lin and P. Staff had a work called Hormonal Fog (study #6), a smoke machine with a trailing silver foil pipe that pumped out fog spiked with hops, liquorice and dong quai — all herbs and roots that have natural anti-androgen properties. I remember someone telling me about an artist/critic called Bharti Lalwani, who runs Litrabh Perfumery, a scent lab that uses fragrance as a new language/extended medium for critique. They make perfumes from rare cacti that only bloom for a single night. It’s all so sweet and terrifying! So elusive and abstract and mysterious. Peripheral, subtle, not cool but close — something similar, weirder.

People pass by the window and double take at the smoking doorway. It makes me want to laugh out loud. I wonder if it’ll make everyone want to kiss each other. Turn to the person next to them on the bus, wistfully gaze into their eyes. I want the love potion to be real! I want everyone to stop by and huff a lungful of this real life magic. Even if it only makes us feel generically blissful, intimidated and aroused by the presence of a Real alpha. I want to take this feeling on the fly. Put the pheromones in an elfbar, in a perfume, in a nos cartridge. This exhibition is a proposition. It is flirting. It made me blush.