What does pleasure mean to you? What images, sensations and recollections flit through your mind as you allow yourself to consider the many ways pleasure registers? It’s an exercise in subjectivity. No two people’s impressions of pleasure will be precisely the same. Even if they dance around the same themes and experiences, they’ll never be identical because there is an endless speculative configuration of possibilities. 

Bliss Reel is a series of four short videos and an accompanying 84-page zine directed and edited by New York-based creative director Sarah Kendric, which invites creatives from Kendric’s wider community to share insights into their own pleasures. Dancing, kissing, friendship, and ice cream are just a few of the many pleasures depicted, while so many more are suggested or described in the hypnotic vignettes and the companion zine. 

Both the zine (designed by Edward Martin Shaughnessy V and edited by Clara Hillis) and the films (shot by James Kolsby, with a score by Callie Reiff) have a confessional, intimate feel. Reiff’s soundtrack is hypnotic and there’s a recurring presence of that precious golden light that comes just before dusk in the city – the enchanted hour that the French call entre chien et loup (between the dog and the wolf). 

For Kendric, the guiding principle of the project was to amplify our ambient awareness and appreciation for pleasure and, in turn, maybe generate a bit more of it. “When I started thinking about Bliss Reel, I was feeling a lot of dread and helplessness over our political climate and the way it’s shaping our culture,” she explains. “I started this project almost as an exercise in reminding myself what makes me feel that feeling of being present in a moment of passion. And then I got curious about how my peers were cultivating or even just thinking about those feelings too, and that inspired the zine component.” 

The descriptions and associations that came up around people’s perceptions of pleasure were less sexually explicit than Kendric anticipated, and often included more abstract impressions and sensations, which she tried to reflect in the design of the zine. “An image that came up more than once was people associating pleasure with the colour deep red, which I loved and used in the zine  – there’s no black anywhere in the book, only a dark red.” 

While the pursuit of pleasure might feel counterintuitive in a world filled with so much sorrow and horror, Bliss Reel depicts the communal aspect of shared pleasure – a means of attempting to connect with others in a spiritual realm as opposed to a hedonistic, solipsistic quest for personal satisfaction. The idea of connection – “both trying to examine it and actually foster it” – was at the heart of the project for Kendric. She says, “I noticed that a lot of responses mentioned deriving pleasure from a sense of community and togetherness.” In this spirit, half of the profits from the project will be donated to For the Gworls. 

However, it registers and whatever our unique associations of pleasure may be, Bliss Reel invites us to immerse ourselves in the sensations of other people’s personal pleasures. It is a reminder, quite simply, that taking even a moment out of our hectic day to experience something sensory and elevating is vital. It’s a chance to feel embodied rather than dissociating; it’s an opportunity to feel rather than being trapped in our heads. It’s healing. Kendric tells Dazed, “When you really feel pleasure in your body, whether it be from the bass of a certain song or the heat of a certain touch, there’s that sensation of everything else melting away, which is maybe soothing.”

The launch of Bliss Reel and a screening of the films takes place on 7 August from 8pm at Dear Friend Books, 343A Tompkins Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.