Erotting
Paskamer x Elín Margot



Hildegardistraat 31, Rotterdam.
Fridat, 25th April 2025, 19:00

🐑 🦠 🪡 🐑 🦠 🪡 🐑 🦠 🪡 🐑





Rec-s /Rex/ [reporting live]:



(long scroll ALERT!)


Welcome to our double king bed! 

We have been resting a bit. And now we are ready for more.
Elín Margot joined Paskamer for a remote residency.
Pixels travelled between Iceland and Rotterdam for a while.
Now she is finally here with us.

There has been some making, some slow unfolding.
And we would like to share it with you,
dear receiver of this newsletter.







(in medias res) So what is bedrot, really?
The term shows up online in late 2022. Mostly on TikTok.
People film themselves lying in bed all day
eating, scrolling, doing nothing.
Captions say things like “doing absolutely nothing gives me joy” or “born to rot, forced to work.”








By mid-2023, it goes viral.
The algorithm picks it up, and wellness blogs rebrand it as self-care.
Suddenly it’s a lifestyle
another hashtag in the feed.

But bedrot isn’t new.
It names something people already do:
checking out, turning inward, refusing to perform.
Not sleeping. Not healing. Just staying horizontal.
Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for days.

It’s part joke, part coping.
Part aesthetic, part soft protest.
A way to rot in public.
To say: I can’t. Not now.

Like everything online, it loops.
Anti-productivity content becomes productivity again.
The scroll keeps scrolling.

Still, something holds.











Elín doesn’t hop on the trend.
She is not selling bedrot as a mood or a vibe.
She asks what it means to rot, together, physically.

To share space and microbes.
To let bodies affect one another on a microbial level.

In her setup, we don’t just lie in bed,
we simulate what’s happening underneath.
Like entering a microscope.
We become surface, host, culture.
Sweat, crumbs, and breath feed what surrounds us.


We are our microbes.
We carry them, exchange them, leave them behind.
Rotting together disrupts the idea of being separate
contained
sterile
individual.









Wool: warm, damp, and active.
Not decorative. Not polished.
It holds heat, sweat, and microbes.
It makes visible what the body gives off, and what it absorbs.

The textures matter.
Softness isn’t neutral.
Fur isn’t innocent.
These materials invite contact, not comfort.

They carry a design logic too:
one that resists sterilisation, and recognises contamination as part of relation.









But this isn’t meme therapy.
It is a setup for slow breakdown.

Minimal activity.
Things spread without effort.
Seemingly unproductive.

Where internet nihilism turns inside out,
and fills with microbes.








Some Truths about Elín


WHAT DOES WOOL KNWO THAT WE DON’T?
It knows how to stick together. Literally, an individual fiber that attaches itself to others and becomes a skin, a sweater, a piece of furniture, etc.

WHAT WOULD YOU GIFT A SHEEP?
Seaweed! They love it. Salt is an essential mineral for sheep (as essential as water!). It’s often supplemented through salt stones, but they can find it themselves in nature in the form of seaweed. The wool I’ve been working with was filled with black sands, as the sheep spend a big part of their day on the beach, searching for and eating seaweed.

WHAT IS A GIFT TO YOU?
Tools, food, something people make themselves, or a moment together.

PAPER OR SCREEN?
Paper

LOVE
Many things, but right now I’m drinking coffee in the sun and that’s just an amazing thing. So I’ll say that: morning coffee in the sun.

HATE
Injustice

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE TOOL?
Maybe it’s a cheesy answer, but I think my hands are my favourite tools. Tools help where my body is limited, but it always ends up being my hands that feel and help me decide the next steps. Otherwise, I like 3D printers, it’s still magical to me that I can draw something on the computer and after a few hours it exists in the tangible realm. And sandpaper, that’s also a bit magical to me, how you can get rough surfaces to be sleeker than glass with just paper.








A day in the life of a sheep (fill in the blanks)




My ________(adjective) sheep wakes up covered in ________(bodily substance), its wool already holding yesterday’s ________ (noun).

It eats ________(something soft) and drags its body across the (place/surface).

Around noon, it settles in,

not to rest, but to ________(verb).

Its fleece smells like ________(a smell),

and something else I can’t name.

The sheep doesn’t perform.

It just stays.

And somehow, that’s enough.