Raw and Cooked
Recently completed, this is my final project completing my Masters Degree.
This project looks at our relationship with nature through observation of where the urban and rural meet and how our idealised notion of nature occurs in the construct of ‘The Natural’. While the natural world remains our primary cultural reference point, in language, image or form, it is our dislocation from nature that has produced this signifying system, symptomatic of a society that fails to recognise itself as being part of nature and of the same evolutionary structure. Claude Levi-Strauss’s theory of The Raw and The Cooked identifies culture’s ‘cooking’ of that which it sees as harmful or unappealing in order to render it safe for consumption. Through this process we transform the raw ingredients of nature through images and mimicry into ‘The Natural’, an easily-digestible commodity that contains only what we desire, thereby improving upon nature and consequently enhancing the positive value of our society. This however creates a paradox: while our society is seen as beneficial and therefore good/natural, it is its unnatural qualities that separate us from nature.
This project looks at our relationship with nature through observation of where the urban and rural meet and how our idealised notion of nature occurs in the construct of ‘The Natural’. While the natural world remains our primary cultural reference point, in language, image or form, it is our dislocation from nature that has produced this signifying system, symptomatic of a society that fails to recognise itself as being part of nature and of the same evolutionary structure. Claude Levi-Strauss’s theory of The Raw and The Cooked identifies culture’s ‘cooking’ of that which it sees as harmful or unappealing in order to render it safe for consumption. Through this process we transform the raw ingredients of nature through images and mimicry into ‘The Natural’, an easily-digestible commodity that contains only what we desire, thereby improving upon nature and consequently enhancing the positive value of our society. This however creates a paradox: while our society is seen as beneficial and therefore good/natural, it is its unnatural qualities that separate us from nature.