JUAN LE PARC TEMPLO DE LA CARNE / TRAGEDIA ZOOPHILICA

The Temple of Meat is an immersive virtual universe created by Argentinean artist Juan Le Parc in which visitors explore an ancient temple built from butchered and deli meat. The cow and the pig, two symptomatic and symbolic livestock animals, have been chosen to represent religious and moral food taboos in this dramatised animal tragedy.

Staged in a slow, macabre and mechanical choreography, on the verge of agony and cannibalistic butchery, we hear the automaton clock of the churches screaming in unison with that of the automatic slaughterhouses, announcing the time of production on the assembly line of industrial suffering.

In the second part of this architecture of memory, human animals appear, some old and swollen from obesity, others younger, deformed by rickets. All suffer from malnutrition and their bodies rebel against this injustice by fomenting wars of hunger and satiety. In the middle of the temple, the negotiating table of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council is set for a carnivorous and cannibalistic feast. This is where the last act of this tragic story is played out.