During mid-1980’s, in an effort to boost the beef industry and the consumption of branded beef products among Americans, the National Cattleman’s Beef Association launched a campaign in association with the 1985 Farmbill entitled, “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner.” It was an overwhelming success, such that “ Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” is now recognized by 88% of American consumers.1 Using this campaign as a launching point, the series “Pioneer” is an extension of a project labeled, “It’s What’s for Dinner”, and grapples with the relationships between consumption, capitalist ideology, and the use of social signifiers to manipulate decision making. This series attempts to articulate these observations, utilizing objects, in this case meat, branded with a geometric Islamic pattern commonly used in architectural detailing in both new and old construction throughout Iran.

The slogan and its connotations serve as a starting point in examining social and cultural parallels I find between nation states of opposite governing system, specifically between capitalist and theocratic systems.  While the difference in application lies between a fetish for money spending consumers among the capitalists and on radical spiritual consumption among the theocrats, the striking parallel lies in the calculated use of human morale to create and shape culture, regulating the direction in which it grows.  Utilizing a propane torch and a custom made branding iron inscribed with this pattern, an act of re-contextualization implies the historic representation of cattle branding, re-commodifies the commodity, references mass marketing, and alludes to branding identities or logos. Moreover, the possibility is created for a re-invention, producing either a strengthening or an erasure of the symbol’s significance.

The use of branded meat in “Pioneer”   blurs boundaries between the psychosocial, the political and the cultural. In totality, this work feeds a curious investigation of the power of collective complacency, the psychological variables or motivations at play at point of purchase and the repercussions of individual identity or behavior on social paradigms as a whole.

1 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. 11/07/2007. Beef Checkoff Program Receives International Attention. from: http://www.beef.org

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