Annihilation, Reconstruction and Harmony in Carnal Desire

Author

Yukang Tao, Syracuse UniversityFollow

Date of Award

5-11-2025

Date Published

6-18-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Film and Media Arts

Advisor(s)

Deborah Dohne

Second Advisor

Rebecca Xu

Keywords

Aesthetization;AntiSpecism;Biopolitics;Posthumanism;Slaughterhouse;Xenoecologies

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts

Abstract

This thesis investigates the aesthetic, ethical, and philosophical implications of meat consumption and bodily commodification of humans and animals within capitalist hierarchies through the lens of digital art, performance and sculpture. Focusing on the intersection of humanity, animality, and technological embodiment, the project interrogates how contemporary systems of power aestheticize violence and disguise exploitation under the guise of ethical consumption. Inspired by critical theories, particularly of Amber Husain, Jacques Derrida, George Bataille, and Donna Haraway, the thesis examines the ambivalent tensions between seduction and slaughter, subjectivity and domination, and how these dynamics are embedded in both animal and human exploitation. The mian project, Annihilation, is an experimental 3D animation, textile mixed media sculpture and real-time performance installation composed of six interconnected scenarios: Stunning, Bleeding, Evisceration, Chopping, Feast, and Cultivation. In each stage, I embody a semi-posthuman self, undergoing a speculative slaughtering process wherein boundaries between human, animal, synthetic, and technological are blurred. Through 3D scanning, then, digitizing hand-crafted mixed media textile sculptures as digital landscapes within Blender, I recreate fleshy and translucent terrains. The project further uses AI (Kling) to continuously rupture and regenerate representations of the digital sculpture landscape, producing a recursive tension between organic and artificial, authentic and simulated. The project critiques how human, animal or hybrid bodies are processed into commodified identities and asks whether a future of ethical coexistence beyond hierarchy and objectification is imaginable. Also, Annihilation sheds a latent utopia of future grounded in vulnerability, ambiguity, and unknown multispecies entanglement.

Access

Open Access

Recommended Citation

Tao, Yukang, "Annihilation, Reconstruction and Harmony in Carnal Desire" (2025). Theses - ALL. 915.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/915