HVAC: Thermal Comfort
HVAC: Thermal Comfort, 2018
Collaborative Performance Installation
CounterPULSE, Soundwave Biennial ((8)): Infrastucture
Duration: 25 minutes
HVAC: Thermal Comfort is a sculptural sound performance that probes the quiet violence of climate-controlled interiors. In collaboration with Dana Hemenway, this work stages an embodied meditation on how Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning systems shape and suppress the body's natural responses—sweat, shiver, thirst, ache.
Through sound, sculpture, and movement, the work asks: What happens when comfort becomes control? What is lost when the body forgets how to respond to the weather?
HVAC becomes both a metaphor and mechanism—a symbol of our complicity in systems that insulate us from discomfort while deepening our disconnection from the Earth. The performance turns the invisible infrastructure of thermal regulation into a tangible, felt experience—rendering air itself as a site of politics, power, and estrangement.
Credits:
Sculptures & Conceptual Lead: Dana Hemenway
Sound, Choreography & Conceptual Lead: Surabhi Saraf
Dancers: Gabriel Christian, Stephanie Hewett, Felix Sol Linck-Frenz, Javier Stell-Frésquez, Tiffany Tonel, Estrellx Supernova
Curator: Sophia Wang
Writers: Christian Nagler, Luna Izpisua-Rodriguez
Additional Choreography Support: Christian Nagler, Dana Hemenway
Fabrication Support: Charlene Tan, Jerome Rivera Pansa
Graphic Design & Printing of HVAC Poster: Colpa
Documentation: Ben Leon, Anirudh Mistry
