Indebted to the Earth
Currently on showin the group exhibition “Uprooting”
Curated by Mátyás Horváth
Artists: Pol Esteve Castello-Gerard Ortín Castellví, Fuzzy Earth, Daniella Grinberg, Dániel Máté, Rita Süveges, Tomas Uhnák with Asia Dér, Tamás Kaszás, Asunción Molinos Gordo
06 Febr 2025 – 14 Apr 2025
Budapest Gallery
Oil fuels the economic machinery of agro-capitalism as the food so produced fuels the bodies of its workers. Dániel Máté’s video installation Indebted to the Earth takes as its point of departure the difference between the amount of energy needed for the industrial production of food and the energy value of this food. While at the beginning of the 20th century, 2.5 calories of energy were needed to produce one calorie of food, this ratio has increased tenfold by today. The burning of the 'can’ in the video symbolically represents the energy required to manufacture and transport the can and to produce the food it contains.
Underscoring the meditative video, Dániel Máté delivers a personal account of his research, focusing on the correlations of energy-intensive production, canning and transport. The installation environment around the work also evokes this system of relations: the column evokes the towers used in hydrocarbon extraction, while the pipe frame structure alludes to industrial warehouses and the world of transportation. The artist’s research explores the energy consumption of the food industry through the word pair debt-loan, highlighting that the inequality of distribution is not only true for the use of hydrocarbons, but also for the functioning of society. The food security of the West is based on the exploitation of the global South, while the security of the middle and upper classes is based on the exploitation of the working class. So, even though we are investing unprecedented amounts of energy in agriculture, starvation has not been eliminated, and the distribution of resources remains disproportionate.
Indebted to the Earth: stainless steel pipe, fitting, video 12’
Text: Mátyás Horváth
Translation: Dániel Sipos
Underscoring the meditative video, Dániel Máté delivers a personal account of his research, focusing on the correlations of energy-intensive production, canning and transport. The installation environment around the work also evokes this system of relations: the column evokes the towers used in hydrocarbon extraction, while the pipe frame structure alludes to industrial warehouses and the world of transportation. The artist’s research explores the energy consumption of the food industry through the word pair debt-loan, highlighting that the inequality of distribution is not only true for the use of hydrocarbons, but also for the functioning of society. The food security of the West is based on the exploitation of the global South, while the security of the middle and upper classes is based on the exploitation of the working class. So, even though we are investing unprecedented amounts of energy in agriculture, starvation has not been eliminated, and the distribution of resources remains disproportionate.
Indebted to the Earth: stainless steel pipe, fitting, video 12’
Text: Mátyás Horváth
Translation: Dániel Sipos
Photo by Tamás G. Juhász