Autopsy of a Burger: Intermapping Hidden Infrastructures

This project examines the everyday burger as a spatial and material interface that conceals the ecological, territorial, logistical, and political systems that underpin it. Rather than treating the burger as a neutral consumer object, I approach it as evidence. Its components, including meat, bun, vegetables, cheese, and wrapping, are understood not simply as ingredients but as layers that conceal animal confinement, slaughter, transportation, labour, land use, environmental degradation, and waste management. In this sense, the burger is not the end product of a transparent chain. It is a condensed artefact that allows for the analysis of broader systems of extraction and control.

My working definition of care is not limited to care as protection, empathy, or repair. In this project, care is understood as a set of practices that maintain the continuity of a system. These practices include feeding, preserving, transporting, packaging, monitoring, and regulating. Care, therefore, has an operational meaning. It refers to the work required to keep bodies, materials, and infrastructures functional. At the same time, this care is unevenly distributed. Industrial food systems sustain some bodies and processes while exhausting, disciplining, or eliminating others. For this reason, I define care here as a selective relation that includes maintenance, labour, attention, regulation, and control. It cannot be separated from the extraction process.

For the display strategy, I use a layered display system composed of three parts. The top layer is a transparent surface containing selected information. This layer functions as an interface. It frames access to the material below and makes the role of mediation itself visible. The middle layer is organised as an evidence field. Structured in a grid, it is conceived as a forensic surface on which fragments, visual material, and references are staged for inspection. It filters and limits visibility, echoing how the burger presents itself as familiar and manageable while concealing its supporting infrastructures. This layer shifts the display from recognition to analysis. It asks visitors not only to look but to compare, connect, and interpret. The lower layers consist of drawers that archive the deeper research material under the categories of labour, transportation, industrial body, ecology(?), and territory. These drawers contain photographs, notes, documents, and other research fragments. Some of them are connected vertically through openings, so that one layer can refer to another. This makes it visible that these categories are analytically distinct but materially interdependent.

The display produces care by structuring a particular form of attention. It does not offer immediate comprehension. Instead, it requires time, sequence, and physical engagement. Visitors must look through the upper layer, examine the evidence field, and open drawers to access additional material. The display asks the visitor to remain with the material long enough to recognise that what appears to be an ordinary food item depends on extended systems of labour, territorial organisation, nonhuman management, and environmental transformation.

The exhibition also establishes several relations. First, it alters the relation between the viewer and the object. The burger is displaced from its role as a consumable object and redefined as evidence. Second, it establishes a bodily relation between the visitor and the display. Visitors must move around the table, adjust their viewpoint, and physically inspect different parts of the system. Third, it establishes relations between human and nonhuman actors. It links human consumption to animal bodies, agricultural land, water use, waste systems, and labour conditions. In doing so, it frames care not as an exclusively human ethical category but as a spatial and infrastructural relation distributed across multiple bodies and environments.

At the same time, the display does not claim to be fully comprehensive; some materials remain partial, fragmented, or difficult to access. This limitation is a deliberate choice, emphasizing that food systems are characterized by uneven visibility. The research does not aim to produce a complete archive but to highlight these disparities. The display is not designed for quick reading. Visitors who only explore the transparent surface will see only a limited version of the project. This selectivity is intentional.