Emma Bennett

“ Is this what, for me, makes the address of the ASMR role play restful, relieving, over and above those real-life caring encounters it imitates? [5] At the doctor, the spa, I may be granted a degree of anonymity (these professional carers do not know me) , but I am still taxed with the effort of acting like a person, projecting some coherent image of myself. But here, with Olivia, who promises me, amongst other things, a peel-off mask, a loose personhood is projected on to me by someone who cannot even see my face. ”

“ Olivia’s ‘you’ is not ‘me’, never quite; it just coincides with the space that I am, for this time. This is not a scary or unhappy interpellation, because not only is it explicitly provisional, it’s also full of reassurance. You have a beautiful scalp, very symmetrical, very smooth, says Olivia, as she speaks into being a person-shaped space, a body devoid of the distracting specifics of ‘me’.
4.
In her video called ‘1 Hour FACIAL Spa BLISS’, Olivia proffers an array of little vessels and products and curiously textured items, selected for you, and for their sound. ”

“ Individualist doctrines celebrate the ‘I’, collective movements the ‘we’. Devoid of the fullness of self-assertion or the positive connotations of friendship, community and political solidarity, ‘you’ can tend to get overlooked. ”

“ But I strongly feel the contiguity of our rooms, hers opening on to mine with this as the window – this, my screen, my face.
2.
Olivia has called this video ‘CLOSE UP Medical DOCTOR Role Play’. [1] This is a mutual performance. A two-sided role play. I can see her but she can’t see me. She pretends to see me: This is how it works. She looks intently in my direction, and I feel that gaze, tangibly, on my face. She is smiling, but serious, and speaks with the calm, attentive expertise of a medical professional. But the glasses she is wearing are too big; they keep slipping down her nose. ”

“ For little articulations, attentions like this, they rely on sensitive microphones, which pick up surface-level meetings between the body and the things it touches. Finger pads, for example, ever so slightly moist, adhering momentarily to the tacky plastic of a travel-sized shampoo bottle, to make a gentle thuck–thuck. ”