VICE
Pigeon Performance, St Enoch’s Square, 2022
If a pigeon only eats bread, is it a bread pigeon? If I only eat macaroni, am I a macaroni man?
VICE is a performance and series of public happenings that took place around Glasgow in 2022–23. The work explores consumption, repetition, and the way we become shaped by what we ingest, whether that’s food, media, or ideology. Using moulds made from a decoy pigeon, I baked lifesize pigeons out of pigeon-safe bread and fed them to real pigeons in places like Buchanan Street and St Enoch Square. The pigeons were hesitant at first, circling the bread versions of themselves. But eventually, one would peck. Then another. Within minutes the flock would swarm, tearing apart and consuming the bread pigeons completely.
The project was partly inspired by a period of my life where I often ate nothing but Kraft Macaroni Cheese. I became obsessed with the comfort it gave me, and aware of how the foods we depend on, especially in moments of stress or routine, begin to define us. In VICE, I wanted to explore that cycle of consumption. Do we become what we consume? And if so, are we capable of choosing something different?
The work was also influenced by simulation theory, algorithmic living, and our digital filter bubbles, which narrow and repeat our inputs, reinforcing habits and beliefs. I was thinking about energy and where it comes from. What happens when we are stuck in a feedback loop, endlessly consuming ourselves?
Place was essential to this work. The performances happened in crowded city spaces filled with shopping, noise, and routine. On streets designed for overconsumption, I introduced something slightly absurd, pigeons feeding on pigeons, to reflect back the rhythms of the place. Like us, the pigeons are conditioned by their environment, shaped by excess, and driven by instinct. I saw them as stand-ins for people, acting out behaviours we don’t always stop to question.
There is a normal speed version of the film available HERE
To read my Critical Journal, which is a crtical analysis of this work, and its evolution over time, click HERE