Social Body - Keith Hessian


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Title: "Liebe zum Fleisch"
Sound and Video - Keith Hessian

Description:

An examination into the connection between flesh and meat, the body as consumer and producer of such, and the underlying sexual connotations of meat products

The role of process in the unfolding of the idea into finished work:

The original Liebe zum Fleisch was an offshoot of a previous piece I shot on 16mm entitled "The Bay Area Vegan Alliance." This early piece was a playful gesture towards the masculinity of meat using the iconic image of the male at the barbecue while the female "gathered" or "provided" the items he needed. Some images from this piece are included in the montage sequence in Liebe zum Fleisch. The idea for the final video came after I composed a list of sexual innuendos originating from meat products in relation to male and female genitalia - i.e. meat stick, beef curtains - and sexual acts - i.e. taking her to the sausage factory, beating the meat, stuffing the turkey, etc. The linguistic collusion between items of consumption and acts of production led me to the realization that in fact when one consumes a meat product, one literally is consuming the product of an orgasm. The two diametrically opposed meanings derived from a single signifier delightfully held true when I found the actual sounds of both consumption (chewing) and producing (procreation) could be stripped from their original context and interchanged with one another.

Conceptual Origins in "The Social Body in Demonstration."

Initially I had planned on creating an original project attempting to reposition the body within its natural context exposing its materiality as a consumer and decomposer of material. Unfortunately, I encountered some difficulty in securing a location for which to perform this act, and I reluctantly opted to re-edit Liebe zum Fleisch with an increased visual emphasis on the body's place within the meat cycle. I've always had a need to look beyond the surface sign value of commodities and reach a deeper understanding of the methods of production and inherent use function. With the methods of meat production increasingly disappearing from the consumers entirely - even recently, beef used to arrive to supermarkets in the form of quarter cows that were then butchered into shelf ready products in view of the customers, a practice that has all but disappeared as rendering houses increasingly ship customer ready cuts of meat- Liebe zum Fleisch is an attempt to strip away the glossy images produced by the meat industry and to question the carnal aspects of our own existence.