To make Grievable (The Momentary)
Animal lives are often positioned as inherently more killable than humans’ just by virtue of their species membership. This positioning renders the grief felt for animal death socially unintelligible. To Make Grievable resists this erasure by acknowledging the everyday violence enacted by the US industrialized animal agricultural system. The building now known as the Momentary functioned as a cheese plant for Kraft Foods Company from 1947-2013. In To Make Grievable, I slowly build a memorial to make visible the bovine lives lost to sustain Kraft Foods Company during its history on this land. In an outdoor location on the Momentary’s campus, this piece creates space to unthink and undo the conceptualization of cows as a commodity and extends grievability across species lines.
