Pure Means

Pure Means is two screen video work by P. Staff, shot in a California desert wilderness during the summer of 2021. Through scenes of volatility, inebriation, dreaming and exhaustion, the video observes a frenzied sequence of alluring, cinematic intensity, made in collaboration with LA-based dancer and performer Gregory Barnett. The sequence is rendered in two parallel streams, one coloured blue, and one coloured red, mirroring the technology of anaglyphic 3D effects and the experimental modes of new wave and expanded cinema. When viewed in tandem, the two streams eventually rupture and split, with one steadily revealing itself as formally and structurally ‘defective’. At the same time, each stream can also be considered to constitute a whole, complete work, available to be viewed independently of the other. Through this hybrid but disjunctive structure, the artist invites the viewer to consider their own position as a viewing subject, raising questions of partiality, perspective and ideals of wholeness and the damaged ‘other’.