I AM BUILT FOR FOOTBALL but I’ve never played it. My friends and I grew up on skateboards in Windsor Park, not far from Foote Field, where the University of Alberta Golden Bears played. It seems simplistic, but in early 1990s Edmonton, skaters didn’t play football and football players didn’t skate. These two tribes simply never crossed paths—which isn’t to say football didn’t fascinate me from afar.

Peachman is my way onto the gridiron. He may look like a first-string quarterback, but really he’s an alien, bluffing his way through all the unspoken codes of sport and sex and masculinity. The series explores elements of ritual, devotion, voyeurism, surveillance, identity, shame, anxiety and the subconscious, all through the spectacle of American football.