‘Heaven is Comfort Disemboweled’ is both an enquiry into discomfort, and a response to the disillusionment of the late stage capitalist world. The question I sought to answer is: how can discomfort be a vehicle for comfort, and how can it become a tool of personal and political de-alienation? Exploring themes of systemic, emotional, spatial, and sexual discomforts led me to the conclusion that discomfort can become a catalyst for comfort through the use of clash and abundance of objects, materials, signs, and symbols, which heighten our awareness of what they represent. The main idea is that of imagery of overexposed mass consumption left to rot and decay, revealing systemic failures in the process.
A key visual inspiration for me was the American roadside, and the semi-abandoned motels, casinos, and service stations. Important for me was to preserve this certain ugliness of it all, using the imagery of the system as an argument against itself. My project allows its users to realise the false promises of capitalism by putting in plain view what the system wants to keep hidden - the symbols of all the unfulfilled futures, and the victims of the structure in which sex sells but in which the sale of sex needs to be hidden.
My proposal for the brothel-bathhouse thus also advocates for the rights of sex workers, both in terms of arguing for a safe space for legal prostitution, and in reversing the notion of the body as a product with consumer rights, instead promoting the idea of paid sex as a service, whereupon bodily autonomy remains untouched.