“Livestock” are the animals employed in the human food chain, living organisms kept and raised for use and profit. The scale of industrial animal husbandry is in the order of billions, with industrial slaughtering plants able to produce thousands of carcasses per day. Livestock are not seen as creatures able to feel pain and distress, but as cogs in a machine, often mass-produced in factory-like facilities, with their bodies restrained and shaped to satisfy industrial needs. In the course of their short lives they often experience great suffering, and most of the time the way they are put to death is far from being humane. Many people find this situation morally unacceptable.
Moreover, the production of meat and dairy products has a considerable impact on the environment, and it is very likely that by the end of this century the consumption of meat will need to be drastically reduced or altogether halted, in order to decrease global farmland use and the connected production of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Becoming vegan is a solution, but it involves radical changes in people’s behaviour and dietary patterns. Can art play a role in raising awareness and lead an audience smoothly through a behavioural change?
At the beginning of the II treatise of “The Genealogy of Morals”, Nietzsche writes that man is a promising animal, an animal that is permitted to make promises and able to hold on to them. Such ability to manifest one’s intention to act or refrain from acting in a specified way at a certain point in the future seems to be a characterizing feature of man, hence could be exploited to influence behaviour. With this in mind, I developed an installation which is also a persuasive game in which players can win by making one or more promises to change, even for a short time, their eating patterns.
