Misia Zesławska
Keywords: Sex work, Voyeurism, Sensory deprivation
In a world of constant technological growth and precarious economic conditions, an increasing number of people are turning to online amateur sex work as a source of additional income. This project delves into the practice of webcam modelling touching upon its spatial manifestations and poetics of improvised, DIY visual language of lust.
The installation reflects the dual reality of webcamming - a space where intimate performance coexists with absence and ambiguity. It highlights how camrooms offer a curated, seductive image to the viewer, while concealing the real, often improvised conditions behind the scenes.
The division of the installation into a “front” (the stage) and “back” (the off-camera setting), together with one-way facing clamped curtains detail, examines the superficial nature of online sex work. The 22-inch window opening acts as a metaphorical and literal portal, evoking the voyeuristic gaze of passersby. The simplicity and DIYness of the decorations such as the TV frame embellished with aluminum casted ornaments, beer crates construction pillars and plastered drapes refer to the hyper-temporality and un-designed setting of camrooms.
Despite models’ bodies are very often fully exposed to the viewer’s sight, they remain physically unreachable, depriving the act of crucial senses present in sexual encounters - touch and smell. This observation finds materialisation in the symbolic sitting wrinkle frozen on the surface of the puff, and the use of custom developed scent “Dirty hair” that contain components similar to the smell of skins and scalp.
