CARNIVORE, 2016

Performance at Fabra i Coats + action at Sorli Supermarkets, 15’55”
Installation: transparent polypropylene panel, absorbent fridge paper, 150 prepackaged meat labels in ziploc bags
300 x 100 x 2 cm
Created with the support of Livemedia and Sorli supermarkets
[ Young Gallery Weekend III – Escalera de Incendios, 2017  /  Fabra i Coats – Fàbrica de Creació 2016 ]

 

 

Carnivore, later renamed DCS1000, was a system implemented by the FBI designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that could monitor all of a target user’s Internet traffic and share this information with the industry in order to develop appropriate standards. Considering current systems of control such as Carnivore or Echelon and taking as a reference Marx’s Theory of Alienation, this project presents the human being as a prepackaged meat product with its functionality, traceability and fixed price per hour.

«The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.»

Nikola Tesla for “Liberty” Magazine, 9th February 1935

 

 

→ PERFORMANCE – PPA (Perserve Performance Art), 7’15”
Location: Fabra i coats, Barcelona.
PPA is a performance that works as a warm-up for the action later performed at Sorli Supermarkets. During this performance I become a fictional student of Marina Abramovic’s Institute MAI, prototype for Hudson, USA. Therefore, the performance shows the process to follow in order to enter MAI and repeats the series of actions guided by Abramovic to introduce her Abramovic method, recently patented by the artist for the sake of “Preserving Performance Art”.

→PERFORMANCE at SORLI, 8’39”
Location: Sorli Supermarket, La Sagrera, Barcelona.
After the PPA performance I was ready to perform the action at Sorli Supermarkets. This action consisted of re-labelling prepackaged meat products with the purpose of showing the human species as a commodity. The new labels described human meat’s functionality, traceability and price per hour using the structure of the Orwellian society and a few necessary aggregates: Politician, Soldier, Priest, Lawyer, Miner, Engineer, Journalist, Teacher, State Clerk, Artist. The action was performed in the area of refrigerators at Sorli Supermarkets during opening times, allowing interaction with regular and passing by consumers.

 

 

→ INSTALLATION
Carnivore’s installation materializes the actions of the performance and research done on Marx’s Theory of Alienation, the current labor agreements in Spain and the processes of industrialization and mass production of meat for human consumption.  In this way, a silver panel shows 150 prepackaged labels that correspond to the highest paying jobs, the most demanded ones and worst paying jobs in the world today, thus the ones that sustain and perpetuate the labour market. Also, the installation shows ten of the many prepackaged professional meat products re-labeled during the action in Sorli Supermarkets.