Jelisa Blumberg
DISCARDED RITUAL
In urban practice since the late 18th century, the veiling of unpleasant realities marginalized the complex systems that sustain our habitual desires and livelihood. The meat industry is one of the many physically erased practices. Before the slaughterhouse there was just slaughter. With the development of “architecturalizing” slaughter in its “house”, what was once a community practice and experience became a rationalized building system that hid its practices from sight. This thesis attempts to reintroduce the slaughterhouse in the city today as a means to bring this reality out of the periphery. The experience of the practice is structured in three Acts: the traversal of shared space, the transformation of the animal body, and the transaction of shared event. Witnesses, in moments of catharsis and empathy, observe and engage with the subject of the animal’s transformation as a communal event.
