The Yards
April 2017
a collaboration for Francesco Marullo's Garofalo Exhibition "An Analogous Play: Nine Projects for Bertolt Brecht's Chicago"
UIC School of Architecture
UI: Am I
Never to hear the last of these foul rumors
This calumny which poisons at the root
My noblest aspirations and endeavors
To live in harmony with my fellow men?
Oh, why must they refuse to understand me?
Why will they not requite my trust? What malice
To speak of threats when I appeal to reason!
To spurn the hand that I hold out in friendship!
BETTY: You hold it out to murder.
︎
The Yards is a machine for dying in. Straddling the divide between, on one side, a seemingly infinite sea of hog corrals, and on the other an aggregation of processing and packaging plants, The Yards unfurls its tongue, welcoming a steady stream of hogs into its stony expression. Each hog patiently toils upwards along the tongue of The Yards Machine, slowly advancing beneath the iron gaze of the machine, until they reach the “knocking floor,” from which they never return.
The Yards Machine is a systematic process, embodying both the image and function of digestion. In a continuous stream of conveyors, gears, and machinic apparatuses, the hogs are ushered along from their transition to meat. At the head of its tongue is a massive iron wheel. On both sides of this wheel is a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their journey; amid them stands a great burly robot, sheathed in constructive apparatus’. It never rests, and the wheel never stops. Chains are fastened to the hogs. At the other end of the chain they hook into one of the rings of the wheel. And as the wheel turns, the hogs are violently jerked upwards and borne aloft.
At this instant, one's ear is assailed by terrifying screeches. No one hears these screeches. No one turns pale. No one shrinks back. The screech is followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing. At the top of the wheel they are shunted off upon a carrier. Others are swung up, one after another, screeching and roaring along with rusty gears and machinery. The uproar is too appalling for human ears, perilous to the ear-drums. It seems too much for the room to hold—the walls give way and the ceiling cracks. There would at times be a lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax.
One by one the hogs are hooked up, and with a swift stroke tear away their hides. It was all so very corporate-like…so matter of fact. Packaged neatly into containers and distributed across the city, the hogs is commodified, purchased and cooked. Straddling the divide between, on one side, a seemingly infinite sea of appetizers, and on the other your own digestive system, you unfurl your tongue, welcoming a steady stream of pork into your stony expression.
