Factory Obscura brings stepmom’s PROFITOPIA oozing to life

OKLAHOMA CITY — Rarely has an oppressive, discomfiting corporate nightmare been as pink and gooey as PROFITOPIA, the brand new immersive art experience meets cranked-up pop-rock release marrying the imaginations of Factory Obscura and OKC rockers stepmom.

Launching on Halloween Night and coinciding with the release of the band’s new four-track EP of the same name, PROFITOPIA invites guests into an ooze-covered corporate research office that’s been laid to waste by the substance of pure creativity itself.

Throughout, visitors can listen to the new stepmom tracks, peruse cryptic corporate memos, play retro video games, interact with buttons galore, and even try to unravel an embedded mystery that might just uncover the truth behind what happened in the Rejuvacorp laboratory.

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stepmom frontwoman and PROFITOPIA mastermind Lindsey Cox inside the experience at Factory Obscura (B. FIELDCAMP/Okla City Free Press)

The whole wild experience is the brainchild of stepmom singer/guitarist – and Factory Obscura talent booker and team member – Lindsey Cox, who said that she pitched the idea to the collective and was surprised at how quickly they said yes.

Surrounded by flickering, glitching televisions and still-life pink ooze seeping out of – and onto – nearly everything in sight, Cox explained the experience’s themes of creative expression and resistance to corporate time-suck.

“Everything the pink ooze touches,” she said, “is turning stepmom-ified.”

Oozing ideas

No stranger to activist messaging and calls to protest, Cox regularly adorns her guitar during stepmom concerts with social and political statements, with the phrases “TAKE BACK YOUR TIME” and “ABOLISH CORPORATE GREED!” making recent appearances.

That kind of dissatisfaction with big business time monopolization eventually formed the themes of PROFITOPIA, but the project’s earliest origins came simply from the idea to join her creative outlets in a unique way.

“I was just in my room thinking about ‘what am I going to do next year?’ and the thought of creating an immersive experience around an EP came to mind,” Cox told Free Press ahead of the installation’s public opening. “And because I’ve worked so closely with Factory Obscura over the years, I kind of knew what it would entail.”

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An interactive reception desk in the “lobby” of PROFITOPIA at Factory Obscura (B.DICKERSON/Okla City Free Press)

She admitted that she was nervous to pitch her coworkers and collaborators in the Factory Obscura development team on the idea of partnering with her band for their next immersive undertaking, but that she knew how creatively it could be brought to life.

“It was terrifying,” she said of pitching the idea, “but I think that we’ve worked together for so long that they trust me in my vision.”

According to Factory Obscura artist, co-founder, and Director of Logistical Creativity Kelsey Karper, Cox is correct about that trust.

“She has a really clear vision,” Karper said of Cox and the fully formed concept that she brought to the team. “She came to us with [a] proposal to create an immersive experience to go along with the EP, which of course we loved. Just the idea of providing the music with an experience like this, I don’t know of anyone else that’s done that.”

‘Creativity juice’

The PROFITOPIA experience invites guests into what Cox describes as “a surreal corporate campus” with four distinct rooms ostensibly modeled after a reception lobby, an employee lounge, a corporate gym, and a private research laboratory.

But while evidence suggests that it was all once a bland, sterile corporate environment, everything is now covered in a thick, pink ooze flowing and spreading from a machine in the lab, activating the inherent creativity and abstract fun inside every seemingly boring office appliance.

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Items in the “lab” in PROFITOPIA at Factory Obscura (B.FIELDCAMP/Okla City Free Press)

“There are clues that help people uncover the narrative,” Cox explained. “Basically, PROFITOPIA has developed a new technology – extraction bots – that harvest the creative energy and juice from their employees under the guise of, like, stress extraction. But it really just makes them more docile.”

The lab setting actually offers plans and schematics for the extraction bots, and the interactive, goop-covered “Rejuvacorp” machine appears to be the processor of this “creativity juice.”

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A vending machines full of mysterious pharmaceuticals in PROFITOPIA at Factory Obscura (B. FIELDCAMP/Okla City Free Press)

“So stepmom was hired by PROFITOPIA, but their extraction bots didn’t work on us, because we discovered their secret and we wanted the creativity juice for ourselves,” Cox said of the apparent disaster that turned PROFITOPIA pink. “We jammed our music into the machine and caused it to explode and released all of the creativity back into the world.”

The result has not just made everything more fun and expressionistic, but has also imbued the office with a particularly “stepmom” aesthetic, meaning a kind of distorted, aggressively slanted “girly-ness.” 

In classic stepmom fashion, the dismantling of the corporate mentality is also a rebuke of patriarchal norms and bland, brutalist masculine aesthetics.

For stepmom, fun and creativity are tied inexorably to a celebration of womanhood and girlhood, with the pink ooze transforming fridge and cabinet contents into doll heads and teddy bears, all seething with pink glitter and lights.

As a bonus, select dates throughout the PROFITOPIA run from now until December 8th will also feature appearances from the band’s accompanying stage characters, such as TV Head, Lampshade Lady, and the cord-headed Pip, who features prominently in photos throughout the experience.

Opening night concert

To celebrate the installation’s Halloween Night opening and the EP’s simultaneous release, the PROFITOPIA experience was opened up to accommodate a standing-room audience around the Factory Obscura event stage for stepmom to perform a unique and blistering concert for a sold-out crowd.

For nearly an hour, the band ripped through tracks from their catalog and introduced the new songs that make up the PROFITOPIA EP with pleas to reclaim our time from sanitized corporate entertainment and social media and effusive thanks to the audience for showing up for “a real, human experience.”

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stepmom onstage at Factory Obscura for the opening night of PROFITOPIA (B.FIELDCAMP/Okla City Free Press)

The new songs retain the band’s trademark bubblegum-punk sound and infectious energy, but incorporate newly intricate vocal harmonies and even some extended, darker psychedelic touches, all while exploring issues of feminism, mental health, and corporate omnipresence.

The band – outfitted in matching, all-pink business attire with pink ooze and fake blood running from mouths and eyes – was palpably relishing the opportunity to perform inside of their own creation, surrounded on all sides by the PROFITOPIA experience that began in Cox’s head in her bedroom.

Among her many thanks and acknowledgments near the show’s finale, Cox offered her deep appreciation to her Factory Obscura family and their welcome push to always go bigger and to keep thinking further and further outside the box.

“In the five years that we’ve been working together, they’ve always encouraged me to dream big,” Cox said of her coworkers from the stage. “So when I pitched them this idea, they just said “yes, and?”

PROFITOPIA by Factory Obscura runs through December 8th at the collective’s Mix-Tape location.

The “PROFITOPIA EP” by stepmom is streaming everywhere now.

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A hidden detail from PROFITOPIA at Factory Obscura (photo by Wanda D’Amato)

Author Profile

Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.