Earworm operates at the intersection of intimate ritual and street theater, where ears become portals for secrets, seduction, and transmission. This work rejects documentary in favor of something stranger. This is a taxonomy of whispers. An index of ear-contact — turning bodily intimacy into public spectacle.

These images are open-ended. They refuse to resolve the tension between voyeurism and vulnerability. Ears function both as erotic zones and as conduits for influence, recalling everything from lovers’ confessions to conspiratorial plotting. The repetition of gestures across different bodies and contexts builds a hypnotic visual syntax. Each frame here asks the same question. What travels between these people that demands such proximity? The cumulative effect is intentional. It mirrors the psychological stickiness of an earworm — that maddening loop of melody or phrase you can’t shake. The work plants its own infectious pattern, making you see this gesture everywhere after.

By isolating one small act across multiple encounters, the series transforms mundane street life into something almost ceremonial. Touch becomes a grammar. Proximity becomes loaded. What starts as observation ends as obsession, and that’s the point. The work lingers because it understands that intimacy in public space always carries double meanings: connection and control, tenderness and manipulation, sharing and invasion.