Burgerland originally started as a collaboration with Janet Shih and Jason Rabie. The idea was to use research and news about the Fast Food Industry as a springboard for speculative design ideas. Throughout our conversations we decided to develop concepts marked by a hyperbolic or ¨super-sized¨ logic. Our process quickly stirred away from a design aesthetic and towards a gonzo perspective through which we represent satirical ideas in a fictionalized style.
According to the Oxford dictionary food is Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth. The paradox of an industry exploiting natural resources to fabricate edibles with hardly any nutritional value (and not call them candy, for example) is particularly attractive when put in contrast with its presentation emphasizing on environmental awareness and altruism. We thought about the environmental effects of the industry´s agriculture model, but also about the socio-cultural media-enhanced perception consumers have of the items it creates and the stories that accompany them.
We envisioned the hamburger as a token of power, shared in images as a cultural symbol, risen to icon status and elevated to a specific object of worship that may have become the archetype of a specific idiosynrasy in American culture.
Burgerland is an uncanny description of fast food culture . A video of hamburgers growing out of the ground. Cows feed on grass, but in the future, maybe cows will no longer be necessary and bioengineered meat could be grown like grass.
We put the products back into the land, they remotely originated from. Plasticy patties, cheese and meat choreographed in a time-lapse that brings the static to life, growing out of the ground as ready-made, organic somethings.
A different part of Burgerland utilizes the sandwiches´ physical and aesthetic properties as sculptural elements. Three burgers decontextualized and repurposed are presented alongside a digital print. The burgers have been treated with gold leaf paint, the print on canvas paper is an appropiation of Nicolas Poussin´s 1633 work The Adoration of the Golden Calf.
The burger lends itself to a kitsch and pop treatment but is nonetheless a symbol of economical and socio-cultural impact, which put into perspective also represents the changes in the philosophical, spiritual and political identity of the land.
Recipe: walk into a store of your random franchise, order 100 of their standard burgers… make something. Don´t worry, you aren´t playing with food. And the extreme preservative capabilities of these things is mind-blowing, you could store them for months on end with no visible signs of molding. They get plastic hard and are easy to handle.
