Relief from a Certain Kind of Personhood in ASMR Role-Play Videos

The writer Emma Bennett first heard ‘ASMR’ (autonomous sensory meridian response) mentioned during interdisciplinary conversations about lullabies and the politics of work and rest while at Hubbub. After Googling the practice, Emma began watching Olivia’s Kissper ASMR to aid sleep and to indulge a long-held susceptibility to ‘tingles’. Here, Emma asks: Could this spectatorial practice aimed at attaining a dreamy, sleepy passivity be reframed as an active research practice? And, might this counterintuitive move raise productive theoretical questions about activity and passivity, questions that open on to the ethics of rest and its opposites?