No Place Like Homme
No Place Like Homme is a tale of isolation, survival, surveillance and the search for the other. With the concept of virus at the centre of its vision, a vampire becomes the vehicle for Fleming's remapping of queer histories and identities. Telling the story though the vampire's life from the times of the Bubonic Plague to the AID'S crisis.
Set on the Isle of Jura where George Orwell retreated to write his novel 1984. Creating an alternative narrative of Orwell's surroundings while working and battling with tuberculosis. Promoting what Robert McCrum terms “the demons of his imagination.” Later, in the year of 1984, the cause of AIDs was discovered, making a treatment a possibility. This was a sign of hope amidst an epidemic as terrifying and bound with prejudice and misinformation as Orwell’s famous dystopian world.
The conceit, however, is that this whole epic turns out to be a perfume advert – a nod to consumerism’s capacity to nullify history and mask the smell of human bodies. Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, like the miasma theory, our relationship with virus has shifted to be in the room with us at all times.