Matter Archive Landscape

A manifesto of the anthropocene

Slender enough to be slid under ones door and collected by no-contact courier drone service during period of mass hysteria following the high contents of fluoride and anti-growth hormone discovered in tap water. The drones would transport the aluminium flatware to vast industrial units whereby the metal would be heated to high enough temperatures to exterminate any bacteria which may be present before melting it into new forms and redistributing the utensils.

"Alessi Salif Juicer"
14 x 29cm
Aluminium

"The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions-eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.” - (Marx 1844/1975a: 274-5)

Through the development of biotechnological processes in the latter 20th century, the dairy cow became increasingly co-opted as a drafted vessel, measured entirely by its’ utility to satisfy human needs by producing milk, or in Marxist terms, an example of alienation.

Robotic milking systems (RMS)— a form of precision livestock technology, were designed to traverse the lack of available workforce on European farms. RMS facilitated an increase in productivity and profitability through improved labour efficiency and greater milk yields. 

Despite fears that such interventions would prove detrimental to the welfare of the cattle, the cluster claw initially proved itself to be a profitable apparatus for farmers, as their sows’ could be milked up to six times the amount her body had been intended by nature to produce. However, this success was short-lived, as the quality of milk began to plateau as a stress response to the savage conditions.

Some evidence indicated that levels of FFA (free fatty acids) are higher in milk collected from farms that milk cows with RMS due to the increased milking frequency (Klungel et al., 2000; de Koning et al., 2004). High FFA content in milk was considered undesirable because it conferred a rancid taste. The increased milking frequency and shorter milking intervals found in RMS systems have been found to cause increased FFA content in milk, rendering such methods no longer profitable for corporate agriculture (Hamann et al., 2004; Abeni et al., 2005b).

As a species, the dairy cow had reached the apex of its suffering. It was almost as if their biological strike was a way to plead with the farmers and big dairy corporations to stop their exploitation. Not only on a psychological level were they suffering but physiologically, they became more susceptible to diseases such as mastitis, bovine leukaemia, lameness, etc due to over milking.

Tethered by the neck to their intensively confined stalls, submerged knee-high in their own excrement, valiantly injected with hormones, hooked up with tubes designed to administer their liquid diet laced with antibiotics and sedatives, the cows had resultantly become severely distressed. “Treated without compassion like four-legged milk pumps” (Robbins, 2012), the cows had been so severely dehumanised to the point they were unable to perform their very capital purpose: to produce milk for human consumption.

The udders of these sows had become gargoyle. Distended. Trauma. The result of a short but intense life of copious lactation exhaustion from cycle after cycle of artificially inseminated pregnancies and the agony of birth, only to have their calves immediately poached from them. The pallid whirring of machinery from gleaming vats of aluminium backdropped to the mournful cries of the newborn calves lamenting for their mother’s embrace — Her calves, for whom the milk was perfectly formulated, got little or none of it.

Without further biotechnological intervention to counteract this ascent in stress levels, the dairy industry would be no longer economically viable to sustain.

The logical solution to this seemed to somehow negotiate a method to placate the cows with the natural world whilst maximising square footage.

Scientists and farmers consorted together to generate VR systems adapted for the structural features of livestock anatomy. On the headsets, played looped footage of an environment abundant with fertile green meadows overlooked by a bright blue sky. It embraced the herd with ample space to stretch out, bask under the beating sun, whilst protecting them from the clements… Or at least that’s what the projected footage led them to believe.

“They are in nature this way and the automatic milking system will resume as programmed… no human intervention needed.”

"Bulldog skull"

"Lockheed Lounge"

89 x 64 x 152cm

Aluminium

From abounding protrusions on window ledges to bus shelter slants which tipple forward, intermittent water sprinklers, dissecting ‘armrests’ of the surface of park benches, the urban spaces of the 21st century were aggressively rejecting soft, human bodies.

The phenomenon of “defensive” or “disciplinary” architecture, included a proliferation of assembled fixtures which made it difficult for disproportionately vulnerable populations to loiter, rest, or sleep within public domains.

It unscrupulously merged with the metropolis environment which fell oblivious to its malicious intent and made it possible to exclude a group of people from a space in such a way that most people wouldn’t even notice. It was an implicit nudge of intolerance which whispered: “you are not a member of the public, at least not of the public that is welcome here.” (Andreou, 2015)

In their book The Politics of Public Space (2013), environmental psychologist, Setha Low, and urban geographer, Neil Smith, described the operation as a “creeping encroachment” of which has “culminated in the multiple closures, erasures, inundations and transfigurations of public space at the behest of state and corporate strategies”. They contended that “the very economic and political revolutions that freed people from autocratic monarchies also enshrined principles of private property at the expense of a long tradition of shared land.”

Like the spikes used to deter pigeons from roosting and defecating on the cars below, a forest of transfixions occupied the few enclaves of shelter which the homeless would otherwise be wedged into. The destitute by this point were considered vermin. Something to be eradicated. Washed up from the ills of austerity, the homeless were treated as if they were a different species altogether, inferior and responsible for their demise, chewed up and spat out by the capitalist gods.

Public domains had to be sanitised. Poverty kept unseen as a precautionary measure to conceal any guilt for over-consuming within the same vicinity. Shoppers were less likely to feel inclined to expend their wealth on material goods if navigating the high street involved having to tip toe around the soiled mattress and sleeping assemblages of the dispossessed in her £2000 pair of Louboutins.

The government however, felt no shame. In the 2010s, the infamous silhouette of the Lockheed Lounge, designed by mark Newson in 1990, began to bedeck the streets. Although referred to as a chair, it had no intention to be sat on and functioned more as a convex metal perch or a public modern art installation. With discomfort in mind, these fluid metal tubulars rapidly became an all-too-familiar motif on every modern pedestrian walkway around the world. 

Constructed with the thermal conductivity of an aluminium body, the chairs were intentionally designed to get either unbearably hot or extremely cold, depending on the season (which tended to shift increasingly more drastically under the course of climate change). Despite providing seemingly little benefit to the surrounding environment, the Lockheed Lounges were rumoured to have costed over £1 million each to commission and install.

In the launch of such a spectacle, the Lockheed Lounge excelled in the ease at which it continued to distract its beholders from the vagrant posteriors which surrounded them. Hostile architecture didn’t address the rooted issue of homelessness; it merely dispersed it from one area to another, or worst still, reduced its visibility. Out of sight. By the same coin that rough sleeping was thought to be criminalised, such design choices served to displace the visibility of profound inequality and avert the gaze from poverty.

By launching such a spectacle, the Lockheed Lounge excelled in its capacity as a visual allurement tool, to distract the public from the reality of such financial decisions. Rather than spend their funding on shelters, they had effectively launched the best example of the worst kind of design.

Government-employed engineers proposed additional features to further vex the mortal frame of the dispossessed, making it not only uncomfortable to but physically impossible to rest their weary bodies. The idea of adding a pay-by-the-minute coin system was suggested to ensure the Lockheed Lounges could only be accessible to those worthy enough to afford it. This design would function by the festering of with retractable spikes, which after the sufficient amount of coins had been fed, would retreat, revealing its smooth, albeit still incommodious surface.

Defensive architecture was a concept wrought with clues about the explicit motive to exclude and harass, revealing the extent to which corporate hygiene had overridden human considerations and dictated public expenditure. The conception of the Lockheed Lounge and other hostile investments can be equated to putting a bandage on a gaping flesh wound, and pretending it never existed. It may provide one party a sense of relief in diffusing misery from their immediate periphery, but those suffering will continue to do so and experience the considered, designed, approved and funded arsenal of their misfortune.

Breast implant
Silicone
12 ccm

Women stopped developing breasts naturally altogether due to hormones compromised by new birth control, worn by women as an indication of fertility to signal that they are looking for a mate - the opposite of anti-pervert shapewear

"Tabi boot"
8cm heel
Leather

When Kim Kardashian debuted a bikini pic in the what-was-then Maldives, the onlookers’ reception strayed southwards from the usual spectacle of her teeny-tiny waist and large, shapely bottom, to a new point of convergence: the two toed foot.

Whether this was a mere fat-finger Facetune moment — or on the other end of the gamut, until this point, a Facetune cover up — was speculated, debated and exhausted by the media, but ultimately remained unknown. It was uncertain if the cleft toe was apparent on both feet too as  given Kim’s vocabulary of flexuous poses to exaggerate her curves, the other foot was obscured from view.

In the advent of this front-page conspiracy, the plastic surgery world seized the opportunity to capitalise off of the trend and the overnight insecurity of having biologically unambiguous, functional feet. 

What started off as full on surgeries, soon became lunch hour walk-in appointments whereby the option to freeze off the toes was developed with little to no recovery time.

Spontaneous cosmetic modification was a common sequential in the 21st century western world, whereby some trends entered the beauty vernacular fleetly, infiltrating social media feeds for a brief period before returning to oblivion. Then there are the mainstays, such as the two toe surgery, that sliced through the buzz and carved out their residence as a decade-defining glamour movement, worthy of going under the knife for, whatever the cost.

It is thought that those who could not undergo the surgery for medical or financial reasons - let alone the impossible task of scheduling an appointment following the momentous waiting lists, began looking for an alternative solution to achieve the new look. Self mutilation and stories of home remedies, such as trying to isolate blood circulation to achieve gangrene and have the collateral toes fall off began circulating via TikTok and shocking parents of impressionable teenagers worldwide. It truly was a testament to the degree of influence these influencers were capable of garnering: their curated lives serving as a kind of opiate to the masses. 

The fashion world saw this as their opportunity to develop a shoe which could mimic the same ungainly split between the big toe and the rest. That exact dichotomy would explain their enduring appeal—they undeniably caught one’s gaze, just as Kim’s original photo. The Tabi is the younger, more demure sister of the full on surgical two toe intervention. Its’ bisection was capable of activating an erogenous zone previously unexplored by the composites of leather nor silicone. A reversal from our ever evolving cyborg capacities, this trend served to take us back in time to a prehistoric kind of hybridity between man and minotaur. 

Such romantic theatre over a pair of shoes.