When I open the door to Season 4 Episode 6, an art gallery next to an estate in Euston, I am hit full in the face by a cloud of sweet, slightly dust-scented white fog. I gag slightly as I step through the doorway, a cloud of mist forming behind me on the street. “Hi?” I call out meekly into the cloud, which is being sprayed out of a network of metal pipes tethered to the ceiling. “Hi!” someone shouts back, and suddenly I can make out two shadowy figures standing about five feet before me. One of these figures is Ella Fleck, the artist who concocted this cloud of fog for her exhibition, titled Spray.
This cloud of smoke, the titular spray I have entered, is full of pheromones. A mix of two different types, to be exact. Pheromones are the chemicals produced within animals’ bodies and excreted as fluids (sweat, piss, semen, etc); they also give out subconscious signals to other animals, usually those of the same species. We all have them and we all use them, whether we are aware or not.
The first pheromone in the fog is called Androstenol, which is supposedly meant to activate a part of the brain that stimulates reproductive hormones called the Hypothalamus. That is to say: make you horny. The other is Oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone” which is the pheromone usually excreted out of humans after sex – the one that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
“They’re both in there, but in small doses,” Fleck explains. Too much of either might make everyone start acting weird. For example, too much exposure to Oxytocin can have the reverse of the desired effect – in doses too large, it can invoke blind rage. “There were actually two fights that broke out at the opening,” Fleck looks at me, wide-eyed, “but I don’t know if it had anything to do with the artwork.”
“Two fights that broke out at the opening, but I don’t know if it had anything to do with the artwork”
Whether it was or not, it’s hard to know for sure. Pheromones are, essentially, invisible: they’re a scent. While perfume branding is designed (often overdesigned) to lead consumers into believing the scent they’re wearing can have a direct effect on others’ desire, pheromone perfumes have, in recent years, been branded as magic elixirs that can literally make the people around you want to fuck. Heaux Cosmetics, a brand of pheromone perfumes aimed at women, refer to their range as “weapons of mass seduction.”
Fleck, however, is interested in a more sinister side of pheromone production and consumption. In March 2024 she joined a Discord server for heterosexual men to share tips and tricks to procure sex from women. Leaving aside any attempt at natural charm, they instead describe how they employ pheromones and a type of subliminal messaging technique called Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP for short). Under an alias, she inserted herself within the community and, for nine months, pretended she was trying to pick up a woman called Gisele.
The character she created – a middle aged man called Jonathan Michaels – is the subject of Spray, an exhibition that spans two floors of the gallery which includes this seductive mist, as well as a series of AI-doctored self portraiture, an audio piece developed in collaboration with her partner Calum Bowen and the Discord server itself. The AI was used “as a mask, like Cindy Sherman, to disguise myself,” says Fleck. We sat down, a little giddy, on the floor of the downstairs space (a sanctuary from the heavy, heady mist above) to talk Discord, desire and the fine line between deep attraction and complete revulsion
Tell me about the ‘spray’. How did you create it?
The spray is a mix of fog machine fog and mist from an atomiser pulled through extractor fans. The atomiser emits a dilution of Androstenone, Oxytocin and cover scents and the fog gives the spray physical density. The cover scents are fragrance oils I mixed in because to some people the pheromones alone can be too off-putting. I wanted it to smell a bit like someone who’s been working out and has tried to cover it up with cologne.
Why did you decide to fill a gallery space with these pheromones?
I was interested in them as material: thinking about how you can have a body or a person in a space without having a physical person there. I am particularly interested in this molecule Androstenol, which is used in pig farming and also naturally exists in cis men. It’s meant to give the impression of dominance or sexual attraction – or revulsion, depending on what the dosage is and what the circumstances are. I was emailing a lot with the vendor I was buying from and then I think he got a bit sick of me so he told me to join this Discord.
And you used an alias on the server?
I was driven to find out more about the community and pheromones and the way that they operate but I knew that I couldn’t go in there as [a woman], I wouldn’t get straight answers. So I used this character to find out more, firstly out of curiosity. I guess, in a way, it was some kind of critical masking thing, like doing the inverse of what they’re doing.
“There’s a guy on there who calls himself Dom the Gentleman, but everything he posts on there is so revolting”
Tell us a bit about this character.
His name’s Jonathan Michaels. He’s 40-ish, he’s white and he works in a museum. What’s quite important is that I wanted him to be someone that wasn’t a caricature, I didn’t want him to be obviously horrible. I wanted him to be someone that’s actually quite likable. He’s creative, but at the same time has a very insidious need for control and power. I looked a lot at [Russian-American novelist Vladimir] Nabokov, like Charles Kinbote from Pale Fire – these unreliable narrators who are very charismatic. You are intrigued by them, but at the same time you’re like, “Oh my god, this person is just awful.”
What was your character actually trying to do in the server?
He was trying to get advice on how to meet with a woman that he’d been stalking online. He’d become obsessed with this woman, Gisele. He wanted to meet her in person and was trying to orchestrate the perfect encounter by getting the correct dosage of pheromones and using Neural Linguistic Programming. It was a handwritten note he posted that he’d edited from an NLP by Ross Jeffries, the grandfather of NLPs, and it’s meant to create a state of trance. It’s meant to have the listener be almost hypnotised, because of the way that the language flows and the repetition of the word “amazing.”
So creepy.
Yeah, let me read it to you: “Hey, [insert her name here], isn’t it awesome that we get to meet so many different people nowadays that we can just… realise… that a connection like this doesn’t come very often in ways we… feel that growing bond and allow it to happen. Amazing when that happens, isn’t it?”
What are the other forum members like?
A lot of the people in the forum have this sort of pseudo-academic vibe. Then there’s a guy on there who calls himself Dom the Gentleman, and that’s such a telling username, because he figures himself a gentleman, but everything he posts on there is so revolting. He demonstrates this very perverse idea of romance that they often have.
What are the pheromones these guys are using?
They use lots of different mixes. They’re pre-mixed and have names like Nude Alpha or Nude Wolf or True Gent. They’re different concoctions of Androstenol, Oxytocin, Androstenedione – a few different molecules that are meant to have different effects, for example there’s one for a no-strings-attached kind of interaction and one for the boyfriend effect, or one for if you want imprinting or something like that.
Do you feel like handling pheromones as often as you have has had any effect on the people around you?
I think it does in some way. But at the same time, I can’t be sure.
Credits
Text: Eilidh Duffy