The Psychology and Architecture of Decay Aversion.
Decarnis is the visceral disgust and grief of inhabiting a mortal, decomposing, excreting body. It is the internalized shame of our porous, aging, and needy animal nature.
*The body, which had moved freely, suddenly appeared grotesque... not punishment but misunderstanding.*
This weight demands a cultural counterweight—historically met by the pursuit of honor, glory, and transcendent meaning (e.g., Homer’s Achilles).
The Labyrinth of Taboos is the maze-like cultural architecture constructed to manage Decarnis.
Semantic Doubling: Words like "soil" signify both fertility and filth.
Purification rituals prevent sensory contact with decay.
Segregation of bodily processes: bathrooms, cemeteries, waste sites away from habitation.
Vertical geography: Heaven = Up, Hell = Down — material cycles coded as impure.
The bioart installation *Worms Altar: Make Amends* reverses cultural mechanisms of hiding decay.
The pedestal bears “See no evil, Speak no evil, Hear no evil,” naming the blindness the Labyrinth sustains.
By showing the living compost transparently, it invites conscious, embodied acknowledgment of decay-as-renewal.
"Navigate out of the maze through conscious, embodied engagement."
(*Worms Altar: Make Amends*)