Pulling Threads

2024

[Location] BFI Southbank, London, UK

[Medium] TV / Reality

[Role] Performer

[Production] National Film and Television School (NFTS)

[About]

I'll be honest — when I was first approached for a queer dating show, the word "reality TV" made me hesitate. It's a format built on spectacle, on the camera catching you at your most exposed. But that's also exactly what my practice does, just in different rooms. So I said yes.

Pulling Threads is a queer dating craft show produced by the National Film and Television School (NFTS) — one of the UK's most prestigious film institutions. The format pairs queer contestants together through hands-on creative tasks, where the act of making something becomes the medium for connection. It premiered at BFI Southbank, London — a venue that signals the production's ambition to sit at the intersection of entertainment and filmmaking.

For me, participating wasn't a departure from my art practice. It was another version of the same question: what does it mean to be visible as a queer person, in a structure that is simultaneously intimate and public? The dating show format, at its best, holds that tension without resolving it — and that felt familiar. The craft element added something unexpected: working with your hands beside someone you've just met strips away the performance of "dating" and leaves you with something closer to presence.

Being screened at BFI Southbank gave the work a context that elevates it beyond entertainment. It sits in a lineage of queer screen culture that takes representation seriously — not as token visibility, but as a form of cultural production that shapes how people understand themselves.

God, I need Botox!