The Economy of Bliss: Pleasure as Currency
Exhibition / Performance Residue
GlogauAIR, Berlin, Germany

The Economy of Bliss: Pleasure as Currency emerges from a five-day durational performance live streamed on Chaturbate. It considers pleasure within a digital economy shaped by visibility, access, and exchange, where desire is not only produced but continually negotiated in real time.

The performance runs continuously over five days, with the artist live on the platform the entire time. Nothing happens unless a viewer requests it and pays for it, but within that familiar setup, something shifts. Sexual acts are held back. Intimacy is still present, but it never reaches a clear endpoint, disrupting the usual build toward anticipation and release.

Instead of conventional erotic performance, viewers are offered a set of controlled actions, like eating a piece of chocolate, coloring in a book, or reading a poem by Audre Lorde. This list reflects the artist’s own forms of nonsexual pleasure, shifting the focus away from expectation and back onto their terms. In doing so, autonomy and control begin to shift as well. Pleasure isn’t taken away, it’s redirected, becoming slower and more attentive, less about finishing and more about staying with the moment.

The audience becomes an active part of shaping the work. Viewers watch, make requests, and pay to influence what happens, yet what they expect is always just out of reach. Over time, people come and go, and by the third day, some begin to return, now familiar with the structure and more willing to engage on its terms. Desire builds collectively, but never quite resolves, lingering in a constant state of suspension.

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s idea of the panopticon, the work treats the digital gaze as something that actively shapes what happens. The artist is visible at all times, responding to requests, expectations, and the pressure of being watched. At the same time, control never fully settles in one place, it moves between the viewer, the platform, and the performer, constantly shifting as the performance unfolds.

In this way, the work begins to question where agency actually sits within a system like this. What does it mean to take part when desire is shared, but constantly redirected? And how does value shift when fulfillment is no longer guaranteed?

Following the live performance, the work continues through its documentation and exhibition, extending these conditions into physical space.

Photography by Giulia GR