The Foundation

The Foundation combines footage shot around the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles alongside choreographed sequences in a specially-constructed set. Together they form a portrait of a site and its multiple layers of existence, sub-communities, interpersonal relations, and erotic and artistic imaginaries that the site hosts, promotes, and projects. Rather than focusing on Tom of Finland’s work, Staff’s video evokes his foundation as a set of relations. By foregrounding their own identity and personal dialogue with the different communities of the Foundation to consider how ideas of intergenerational inheritance and exchange are complicated by gender identity and presentation. In this context, of a younger trans person within a context dominated by the overtly masculine, male identity of an older generation. Staff explores how a collection is formed and constituted; the communities that produce and are produced by a body of work; and ideas of intergenerational relationships and care.