The Social Life of Meat from Ruth K. Burke on Vimeo.
The Social Life of Meat, 2018
Digital Video, 1920x1080p
Runtime: 4'19"
Digital Video, 1920x1080p
Runtime: 4'19"
Death is sterilized by tidy packaging, free of the difficulty that comes with meat, an animal you never had to know, never had to look in the eye and pray that first blow minimizes all suffering. This work uses an absent narrator to verbally and visually weave archival texts. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft’s 1792 text “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects” and John Trusler’s 1791 book, Honours of the Table act as narrative guide to contrast the outdoor, or living, life of meat with it's indoor manifestation. Trusler’s text is a manual for carving meat and social etiquette that centers around masculine ideals of duty, justice and what is "proper". This is contrasted with Wollstonecraft’s text, considered one of the first feminist pieces of writing.
The narrator moves ambivalently between the two works and uses considerately-timed words and visuals to bridge the domestic experience of multiple species, pulling the viewer in conflicting directions, while questioning the validity of women’s gained agency through the subjugation of other species. In the video, a woman carefully arranges an elaborate meat-based party tray and cuts a moist brisket as the very pigs and cows commune to consume their meals.
According to this study, conducted by the Food Climate Research Network, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food Environmental Change Institute, and University of Oxford, at the current rates of consumption, beef* cannot be sustainable. With this study in mind, this particular work presents to a viewer the faces, the lives, and the social interactions of meat animals in a feminist context. How might facing these beings in their vitality complicate what it means to consume meat? How might it change how and why we choose to consume meat? And how might first person and lived narratives allow us to turn towards the grisly aspects of meat consumption: the very lives of the animals themselves. The work hopes to present these open-ended questions to a viewer and to make space for a viewer's personal reflection on consumption.
*This study addressed beef in particular.
The animals in this video are not the animals on the plate.
Special thanks to Liz Bayan, Nancy Fuerst, and Ruth Ehman.
The narrator moves ambivalently between the two works and uses considerately-timed words and visuals to bridge the domestic experience of multiple species, pulling the viewer in conflicting directions, while questioning the validity of women’s gained agency through the subjugation of other species. In the video, a woman carefully arranges an elaborate meat-based party tray and cuts a moist brisket as the very pigs and cows commune to consume their meals.
According to this study, conducted by the Food Climate Research Network, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food Environmental Change Institute, and University of Oxford, at the current rates of consumption, beef* cannot be sustainable. With this study in mind, this particular work presents to a viewer the faces, the lives, and the social interactions of meat animals in a feminist context. How might facing these beings in their vitality complicate what it means to consume meat? How might it change how and why we choose to consume meat? And how might first person and lived narratives allow us to turn towards the grisly aspects of meat consumption: the very lives of the animals themselves. The work hopes to present these open-ended questions to a viewer and to make space for a viewer's personal reflection on consumption.
*This study addressed beef in particular.
The animals in this video are not the animals on the plate.
Special thanks to Liz Bayan, Nancy Fuerst, and Ruth Ehman.