Making Human Cheese, 2011
HD Video with audio, 4:10

Making Human Cheese demonstrates the process of extracting human milk and cooking it into a mozzarella cheese.  The clean aesthetic of the eternal white space references the sterile laboratory environment, and in doing so asks if human cheese were to be positioned as a medical activity, such as the extraction of human eggs, would it find the same kind of social acceptance? The visual cleanliness is contrasted with the milk donor's voice depicting the messy lived experience of physically, emotionally and politically making human cheese.  

Referencing Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), Making Human Cheese re-visits the seminal work and Rosler's stated concern for "transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production ," and asks how the sign and the body of the woman shifts in the coming biotechnological age. 

Credits

Editing: Miriam Simun
Camera: Wesley Wingo
Co-Producer: Samuel Baumel