Devour, Digest, Defecate
Artist Wim Delvoye built an eating machine that celebrates biological processes whilst questioning the meaning of life and our worth in the world…
Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is the ‘bad boy’ of contemporary art, an agent provocateur who became notorious in the early twenty-first century when he built a machine that mimicked the human digestive system.
The Cloaca is a large contraption that he developed after much research with biologists, chemists, medics and manufacturers. It was a process of collaboration that extends beyond the artist and across several disciplines not usually associated with fine art. When activated, Cloaca needs food to function so the installation also requires a kitchen and a chef to prepare its two square meals a day.
To do something that only approximates what our stomach and intestines are capable of, the machine needed to be ‘room-sized’. The food enters at one end via its ‘mouth’ and then passes through various chambers and mechanisms. Early versions utilised a washing machine filled with enzymes to act as a ‘stomach’.
The digestive process takes about 24 hours, until the broken-down pulpy fluid is finally pumped through a series of tubes that separate the moisture from the solid material. Turds are…
