The title references the electrical signal that triggers a neuron to fire. It also plays on the language of chemsex culture, where "action" means sex - and where most of the experience is not sex at all, but the search, the prelude, the chase. Potential that doesn't resolve.

The work uses 16mm film processed by hand with the chemicals of chemsex - recreational drugs - and ADHD medication. These substances create globulous blooms of shape and colour on the celluloid, like bubbles and stains. The same chemicals that alter consciousness alter the image.

Digital phone footage showing anonymous sex is repeatedly used and broken down. This is the imagery that circulates in the chase - shared to organise, to mobilise, to draw people together while they're still apart. Through repetition and mirroring it becomes pattern, the complex symmetry referencing x-ray crystallography - the process used to visualise molecules too small for any lens. Merged with emojis used to encode words banned by chat platforms. The effect is hypnotic - desire multiplied, satisfaction denied.

Chemsex multiplies desire and excitement whilst denying satisfaction. Endless arousal, anticipation that doesn't resolve. The state parallels ADHD - hyperfocus, distraction, the inability to complete. The drugs can make sex with a stranger feel like love. Chemically induced states are a form of mediation.

The analogue and digital, the chemical and natural, the meaningful and hollow - these binaries are seductive. They play out, but don't settle. We fetishise struggle and judge what bypasses it. I had to notice my own judgements. The blur is the point.

It has tender moments and violent ones. Relentless layering and passages that barely register - like a body jaded through too much pleasure, receptors worn out. The detachment isn't irony. It's what happens when intensity becomes normalised.

Produced in partnership with the British Film Institute, King’s College London, The Wellcome Trust and No.W.Here Lab.