‘READ ME! Looking for Strangers!’ Finnish performance artist Samira Elagoz posted this on Craigslist. Are you familiar with Craigslist? It is a virtual lucky bag! Anyone can post anything: from sales advertisements for homes to open solicitations complete with CVs, and all sorts of variations on ‘man seeks woman’. Craigslist scores high on lists of alternative dating sites.

A few men responded to her ad. She filmed her first encounters, open and exposed, in a cinéma vérité style updated for the YouTube age. Samira Elagoz calls herself a behaviour researcher, but her investigations are not just observing or passive. She entices, and she puts herself on the line. Sometimes a relationship develops, but more often a rather eerie situation in which violence simmers under the surface. Samira Elagoz puts herself in a position in which she becomes the subject of the male eye, and she responds to that eye with her camera.