One...Two...Three Strikes; You're Art.

When I initially started looking up art to describe the industrial food system, I first and formally thought of the film “Food, Inc”; but then I realized that it would be unwise to create a blog post about a film that I had heard so much about, but had not yet seen. So I chose against that initial impulse. Then, I thought once more about my subject. I want to focus on the industrial food systems in terms of their location and the economic success/ impact of the area. It is my knowledge that many fast food places are located in poverty-stricken areas, and that they hold a dominant market of customers. These customers are often unable to afford things other than fast food, so the fast food restaurants grab a greater hold on the population by being the only option. I’m interested in seeing this connection explored more, especially how the corporate food system chooses to place their stores.

In thinking about the social aspects of the fast food industry when it comes to financial situations of the customers, I thought of the film made by Morgan Spurlock in 2004 called “Supersize Me”. Within the documentary, there are pieces of art that make an obvious hyperbole of the grasp that the fast food industry has on its customers.

HOWEVER, in my final decision, I decided to go back to the initial idea of an industrial food system. How it is an industry, as opposed to the idea of simply being a business. With that and a little help from Google, I was able to find a series of paintings done by a satirical painter named Nathan Meltz. He has a series of paintings devoted to the pure, cold, mechanical presence of the industrial food system. In his paintings and screens, Meltz creates depictions of large quantities of livestock often kept and harvested on an industrial scale. Instead of creating these creatures as they are in nature, with soft curves of flesh and expressive faces, these creatures are made to look entirely mechanical. Their joints are gears, and their eyes are lenses. There is nothing natural about them except their general shape. I believe that Meltz is attempting to comment on how the industrial food system has created these creatures to not be viewed as pieces of living tissue, but rather as a mechanized resource that is cold and inorganic. I added his main website to the Zotero site. He has several pieces of animation that use the same style. In a brief overview of his paintings, I have seen the theme of mechanization throughout.