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Playing Chicken Crow Recordings in the Supermarket
Hong Kong
- Recordings of chicken
- crowing/clucking
In the poultry area, fresh and processed chicken are placed in separate sections, with different producers focusing on promoting the freshness, safety, and scientific breeding of the product, from non-factory, organic farming to antibiotic/hormone free. The readable 'interfaces' on the packaging, and the marketing messages on the labels somehow reflexively confirm the overuse of antibiotics/hormones and low-welfare animal conditions in industrial poultry production.
Looking at the supermarket environment as a whole, consumers are surrounded by posters, banners and screens, while images of chickens pecking in the fields and artificial grass in the freezers create a pre-modern, idyllic atmosphere in which the animals appear to be enjoying an ‘mutually beneficial relationship’ with humans. There is no doubt that these deceiful media conceal the true nature of the industrialisation and the evils of killing, intoxicating the shoppers with an anthropocentric fantasy of the ‘happy animal’, without having to feel the necessary guilt and sadness of killing, and therefore unable to comprehend the cost of life. At the same time, the recipes and cooking tutorial videos, the drinks that accompany the processed meats, render a post-purchase scenario of use that motivates consumers to spend more, to purchase items that are not on their lists.
Sound, as part of the overall supermarket environment, also supports the auditory aspects of the immersive experience. From this point of view, I carried out a social practice/performance project in the Citysupe supermarket, Harbour City, Hong Kong. I secretly placed a speaker in the chicken cooler to amplify the recording of chicken sound. The multi-media and multi-sensory stimulation of the supermarket makes the sound of the chicken reasonable, but the uncanny thing is, the vibrant sound of the chicken and the ‘’pieces‘’ of the slaughtered meat in the freezer cannot coexist in a spatial and temporal dimension, but the supermarket presents them in an aggregative form, as part of the commercial scene to improve sales volume. Will people who are used to being surrounded by media and information realise the sound of a chicken crowing?
Workshop for cooking TCD recipes
Coming soon
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