{"id":394,"date":"2022-06-07T21:15:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-07T21:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/25\/?p=394"},"modified":"2026-06-19T07:17:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:17:56","slug":"parascopic-media-platformizing-performance-with-3d-dentistry-and-drag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/25\/parascopic-media-platformizing-performance-with-3d-dentistry-and-drag\/","title":{"rendered":"Parascopic Media: Platformizing Performance with 3D, Dentistry, and Drag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brendan McCauley<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorry honey, we’re stereoscopic now (Zamolodchikova qtd. in \u201cQ&A with @jonathan sims\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Be Your Own Dentist<\/font> (2021) is a \u201c3D immersive film\u201d hosted on YouTube<\/font> that allows viewers to control the direction of the camera\u2019s perspective throughout its runtime. Featuring a performance by Brian McCook\u2019s popular drag persona Katya Zamolodchikova, Dentist<\/font> demonstrates new avenues for artists to construct and utilize relational space through stereoscopic video. As part of McCook\u2019s long-term audience production, Dentist<\/font> also raises new complications for audiencing and access to branded para-social internet personae. I forward the \u201cparascopic\u201d here as a useful term for emergent forms of digital media which enables performers deeper control over their performance \u201cspace\u201d even as they incite audiences to seek deeper access to, and manipulation of, the performer\u2019s image and body. Zamolodchikova\u2019s use of stereoscopic video both leverages and subverts parasocial audience expectations when she takes a camera that can potentially look anywhere and aims it inside of her own mouth.

Keywords<\/strong>: Parasociality, immersive video, drag performance, new media, video art, stereoscopic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper rehearses a digital performance analysis of Be Your Own Dentist<\/em> (2021), a \u201c3D immersive film\u201d hosted on YouTube<\/em> that allows viewers to control the direction of the camera\u2019s perspective throughout its runtime. Dentist<\/em> is a performance work by Brian Joseph McCook, better known by their popular drag persona Katya Zamolodchikova, a former reality television contestant with a massive online following. The film unfolds within a computer-generated environment as a guided meditation featuring Katya\u2019s voice alongside multiple choregraphed versions of her body and culminates in erotic self-administered tooth removal. McCook\u2019s performance demonstrates new avenues for artists to construct and utilize relational space through 3D immersive technology. However, as part of a multi-modal oeuvre of McCook\u2019s creative works, Dentist<\/em> also raises new complications for audiencing and access at the intersection of mediated encounter and branded parasocial internet personae.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To untangle these trade-offs, I forward the \u201cparascopic\u201d as a useful term for emergent forms of digital media which enable performers deeper control over their performance \u201cspace\u201d even as they incite audiences to seek deeper access to and manipulation of the performer\u2019s image and body. I argue that Be Your Own Dentist<\/em> meaningfully draws from traditions of video, installation, drag and performance art, and yet can only survive within the network of fantasmatically intimate, digital social relations that Katya has built through the YouTube<\/em> platform. To illustrate this bind I begin with a close reading of Dentist<\/em> and then discuss Katya\u2019s audience development as a necessary ground for understanding her performance within it. I then examine the capacities of 3D immersive performance, and the \u201cplatformization\u201d (Nieborg and Poell) of the performing body, as a set of affordances for online forms of audiencing and as a set of practices that produce an intimate \u201cencounter via mediation\u201d (Tecklenburg) with an artist-as-brand. I conclude by discussing how Zamolodchikova\u2019s use of stereoscopic video technology is able to flip it on its head even within the confines of parasocial audience expectations. What relations are being enacted when Katya takes a camera that can potentially look anywhere and aims it inside of her own mouth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paying Close Attention<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Be Your Own Dentist<\/em> opens with a straight ahead shot of Katya Zamolodchikova directly facing the eye-level camera as its \u201cneutral\u201d position. If you do not notice the clickable buttons which control the camera\u2019s direction in the frame\u2019s bottom left corner, then this is where the camera\u2019s gaze will remain for the entirety of the film. Katya, in shimmering red ruffled gown, sits cross-legged with eyes closed on the floor of a patterned, tiled room, attended by two duplicate Katyas to her left and right. These doubles are dressed in darker clothing, similarly posed, but with faces covered by sequined veils. If we do begin to pan the camera around the room we will find two more Katya\u2019s in lighter gray behind us, also veiled, facing the first trio. These two Katyas flank the camera\u2019s\u2014and therefore our\u2014position, which tells us that we complete the second trio, and are presumably also seated given the camera\u2019s height. The position of our gaze is fixed, meaning it cannot deviate from its axis, but we can look around as if moving our head while seated. If we tilt it straight down, we find a metal grate below us, much like a shower drain, but framed in neon light. Directly above us, a skylight opens the room to an unsettling rose colored sky. All of the Katyas breathe slowly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The center red Katya opens her eyes. \u201cHello there,\u201d a calm, assured, voiceover welcomes the viewer, \u201cI\u2019m so glad you could join me today.\u201d We know by her direct gaze that the central Katya is speaking, but her lips do not move. The mimesis of a drag-queen lip-sync is already broken from the start. Continuing her steady address, Katya situates us within the parameters of what will be a guided meditation; we will be taking this time to relax. All that is needed for this exercise is our body, our breath and \u201ca pair of stainless-steel slip joint pliers that you can set to the side for now.\u201d The red Katya draws her pliers out from her folds of fabric and displays them to the camera in her left hand before releasing them off to the side where they will float weightlessly around the room should you choose to follow them. As Katya begins to issue breathing instructions, her voice provides continuity as the scenery changes. The room falls away to outer-space, a nebula of floating disembodied Katya heads, each manipulating their jaws, and then a hazy, purple, CGI forest where yet more Katyas adorn a rocky streambed. Returning to the tiled room and its two trios, Katya\u2019s voice directs our focus to \u201cthe mouth.\u201d At this moment, all the Katyas open their mouths wide and additional hovering mouths appear around them. We are asked to reflect on how much daily traffic our mouths have to deal with and are invited to be \u201ca little bit bad\u201d by digging our fingers into our faces to explore its musculature, which the Katyas do orgasmically. The pliers have now made a full orbit around the room and return to Katya\u2019s right hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are asked to open wide, to locate an upper molar with our tongue and then follow through by clamping down the pliers on the selected tooth. Take \u201ca firm and steady grip\u201d and some deep breaths to remove moisture. Upon exhaling we are told to summon a great amount of force and wrench the pliers in a circular motion until the bone breaks. We are allowed to \u201cnotice\u201d this sensation but not be distracted by it, to \u201cbe patient,\u201d \u201cdeliberate,\u201d and to expect a slipperiness that will require us to adjust our technique while moving from tooth to tooth. As blood oozes out of the floating mouths and those of the seated Katyas while they jerk their pliers around, our position is now engulfed inside another large computer-generated mouth looming behind us. If we pan away from the central trio, we may stare down its throat. When this mouth fades away it reveals that the room is now constructed entirely out of CGI teeth and additional, non-CGI, teeth float around it in a lazy orbit similar to that of the pliers. Katya coaches us to return to our breathing. We now share the room with just one large, floating, bald, Katya head. She holds an open-mouthed ecstatic smile with blood running down her chin and then fades along with the camera to black. This leaves us amid the ring of floating molars as credits appear in the void behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parasocial Mediation<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

If I wish to follow Steve Dixon here by analyzing how this performance by McCook utilizes technology \u201cto create different types of content, drama, meanings, aesthetic impacts, physiological and psychological effects, audience-performer relationships, and so on\u201d (5), then I must ask: Who could this video possibly be for<\/em>? Dentist<\/em> is billed as a \u201c3D immersive film,\u201d but such films do not yet have a dedicated audience. It is technically a music video, as its audio layer doubles as track #5 on Katya\u2019s album Vampire Fitness<\/em>. But that same audio takes a back seat to the intense visuals here, and it is certainly not seeking engagement with actual dentists. The audience that is best equipped to make sense of this film, and which may value its immersive format, is the parasocial network specific to Katya, which already lives on the YouTube<\/em> platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Horton and Wohl first forwarded the parasocial interaction as one where mediated life and real-life collapse into one another as a result of communication media presenting a performer to an audience as if in a direct, face-to-face encounter. This mediated encounter gives an impression of an intimate association to viewers that may develop over repeated impressions as if a real social relationship is being formed. Chen further extends this to YouTube<\/em> as a \u201cmediated experience [which] can provide a rich source of symbolic materials,\u201d which enable multiple, digital versions of Goffman\u2019s strategies of self-construction, self-presentation and impression management to be enacted. Through both traditional avenues, such as television, alongside the social media platforms Twitter<\/em>, Periscope<\/em> and Cameo<\/em>, audiences have had sustained long-term access and connection to both Katya as a performed character and McCook\u2019s personal life. Dentist <\/em>is perhaps the first of McCook\u2019s performances to be fully articulated through, and for, these established parasocial relations as a unique audience because it is the first to design a (simulated) space for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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