PASCAL MARCEL DREIER
Live Stock / Live Animals
Series of Works and Exhibition at Transmedialer Raum, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, 2021
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fate” in The Conduct of Life, 1860)
Slaughterhouses, breeding and fattening facilities are located away from the big cities and far from beautiful old village centres; however, trucks are on the road every day – no one can avoid the sight of them. The animal industry moves, fixates, mobilises and immobilises non-human animals in various ways to transform living beings into de-individualised commodities. The animals, however, turn against the system, act in resistant and transgressive ways. However, they are not only mobilised for the purpose of their commodification, but also by humans who want to put an end to animal farming and offer refuge to those who escape this system.
As part of his multi-part project, Pascal Marcel Dreier discusses the forms of (im)mobility emerging in these contexts, their representations and meanings and brings back the missing slaughterhouse geographies (Philo / MacLachlan).
Images © Pascal Marcel Dreier