Noam Youngrak Son
Noam Youngrak Son’s YUMMY BODY TRUCK is a fictional food truck that sells edible human body parts. What sounds like cannibalism at first turns out to be a biotechno-queer fantasy of interspecies mixing – quite literally so. In the computer-generated video, the pancake-shaped head of a "fluidic chimera" tells of its creation: that a rapidly spinning blade has taken on a multitude of organisms – from bacteria and fungi to plants, insects, reptiles… and also sometimes hominids – ingested, ground up their flesh and mixed it all into a malleable paste of diverse cells, organelles, DNA, enzymes, hormones, pigments, toxins: a pool of proteins, amino acids, nucleic acids, phospholipids, and all sorts of different polymers with all sorts of unidentifiable energy states and genetic information. This mushy mass is now being modeled into human body shapes in the YUMMY BODY TRUCK – similar to the multi-species convergence from fishing waste being reshaped into desirable seafood as surimi.
“I can transform into any color, smell, taste, texture or shape depending on what I contain and what you desire. I am a piece of dough – mold me into organisms that are extinct or your fantasy creatures that never existed.” Promises the Chimera. “My plasticity will liberate your appetite”. Both narration and visuals play with our desire and disgust. But the snack from the digital meat grinder also has a sociopolitical undertone. By molding the paste into human body parts, factors such as pigmentation, endocrinological status, and toxin accumulation of the meats gain political significance: lighter or darker pigmentation from melanin indexes “race,” and estrogen residues determine “gender.”
The truck serves the edible body parts in a lunchbox, and an instructional video shows visitors how to see, smell and taste them. The flavors of pigments, hormones and toxins are meant to heighten awareness of the nuances of the bodies they eat. If, for example, the chosen carcass tastes bitter, this could indicate a higher toxin content – carnivores are more likely to accumulate environmental toxins than plants. Nevertheless, the “oral intercourse” from the YUMMY BODY TRUCK promises a sensual experience with the result of turning the consumers themselves into chimeras through the fusion of different DNA.
Credit:
Project by Noam Youngrak Son
Soundtrack by UNOS
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