One of the books I’ve been most pleasantly surprised by lately is Christien Meinderstma’s Pig 05049. Meinderstma is a Dutch designer; for a project, she decided to document what happened to one local pig (of the eponymous number) after it was butchered. The results turn out to be much more fascinating than you might think, even if you’re squeamish about meat. Pigs, it turns out, are mini-factories on the hoof: Meinderstma turned up 185 different products made from the remains of the 103.7 kg pig that she followed. The book depicts the final products: there’s a lot of meat, of course, but it’s astonishing how the rest of the pig is used. Pig skin, for example, becomes work gloves and glue, but also the collagen used in plastic surgery, beauty masks, energy bars, and Valentine’s Day candy hearts. It’s also used to improve the texture of yoghurt and prepared whipped cream; gelatin made from the collagen is used to clarify beer, wine, and fruit juice, as well as the gel caps used by pills. Products made from bones ends up in paper, electronic circuit boards and even plastic explosives and bullets (gelatin is used to transport the propellant – gunpowder or cordite – into the bullet). The Danish Index design awards have a useful video on Meinderstma & her work:
The result is not only a beautiful book; it’s also one that’s instantly revelatory. While there’s been an explosion of interest in the past few years about what we eat and a corresponding disdain for industrialized agriculture, what actually happens in industrialized agriculture is still remarkably hidden from view. One might draw parallels with Niklaus Geyhalter’s startlingly beautiful documentary Our Daily Bread, which depicted food production in Europe. Geyrhalter’s film is especially impressive because of its use of natural sound: no voiceover tells the viewer what to think about the impeccably framed shots of the machinery and people that labor on these farms, but one can’t help leaving the theater with a very strong impression. (Clips can be seen on YouTube, but the low resolution and angry commenters fail to suggest the experience of watching the film.)
Another project that mirrors Meinderstma’s is the British house music producer Matthew Herbert’s ongoing One Pig. Herbert makes constraint-based music with a strong conceptual basis; an earlier recording, Plat du Jour, was based entirely on manipulated recordings of food, informed in large part on the ideas in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. With One Pig, Herbert is documenting the life of one particular pig, from its birth to its death, after which the pig will be eaten; the sounds recorded will presumably form a new album. Right now the blog is documenting the life of the pig; Herbert has intimated that the bones of the pig will be turned into flutes and it’s not hard to imagine percussion being made from the skin.
