Baptiste Picq

Department: Information Design
Website: https://baptistepicq.wordpress.com

#LAGRANDEBOUFFE

As a designer, I am interested in the reinterpretation of cultural objects. In parallel I am also interested in the ritual of eating as a sign of how we produce and structure our society, and how consumption is a crucial part of that. I intend to show how the process of eating develops along with the society in which it is situated.

In this work I analyse La Grande Bouffe, a movie made by Marco Ferreri in 1973. The film shows the story of four men who decide to meet in a house for a gastronomic seminar. Halfway through the movie it becomes clear that actually they all want to kill themselves by over-eating. Ferreri’s movie provides the foundation for my design project. My reinterpretation puts this provocative satire on the consumer society of the 1970’s into today’s society, in which consumption has taken on a new guise, supported by a range of new technologies.

#LaGrandeBouffe explores the evolution of Western society, and in particular the mechanisms that produce changes in our food culture, consumption and attitude towards food. With today’s technologies and the apparition of Internet, information travels dramatically faster than during the 20th century. Consumers have the power to find or share anything at any moment; they are able to demonstrate their lives at every given moment of the day. We no longer eat to stay alive; we eat to represent the person we want to project. In that culture images are an extremely powerful tool.