The Sex Worker series began in 2019, as a reflection on my relationship to the sex industry. There are three cassettes in the series - all out of print, and highly collectible - published by Total Black, with my take on power electronics and death industrial, channelling the emotions of rage, mania, depression, and lust, and featuring interviews and vocals from women in the sex industry from around the world, telling their stories, expressing their place in the industry.
The first two cassettes are very much a lament, seeing my own broken body in these women. My own psychological despair with my sexual addictions and dealing with the aftermath of monetizing my own sexuality. The third cassette takes a more empowering approach, emphasizing the strength, courage, and resilience of the women who persist in making pleasure their career. It's still nasty - Still naughty.
For this boxset, I am presenting a fourth and final chapter, with concepts turning to the way that art and commerce parallel prostitution. How my vulnerability, my creativity, my art, my noise, and my pleasure have all become a form of labor that I see as interchangeable with sex work. In this condition, I still claim my own agency, my own autonomy to express through my body, through my voice, through those bodies and voices of other women. But it's all conflicted. Full frontal and for sale. That's Himukalt." - Ester Kärkkäinen