Worn Out Joy
by Jiayue Yu
portfolio special mention call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2025', 2025
Category: Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts
This body of work examines how contemporary capitalism stabilizes itself by managing and redirecting dissatisfaction, unease, and exhaustion produced by everyday life, while leaving their underlying causes untouched. It focuses on a range of apparatuses of relief: leisure and entertainment businesses that offer packaged thrill and novelty, such as casinos, amusement centers, and theme restaurants; as well as designs and infrastructures embedded in daily environments that quietly soothe the senses, including indoor greenery and artificial water features. Together, these apparatuses regulate collective longings for respite from routine, labor, and urban pressure, offering momentary relief that is calibrated to sustain, rather than disrupt, the system that drains its inhabitants in the first place.