El Perfecto Cerdo (The perfect pig): fat, substance, steroids, complete use of it. This piece, constructed as a fable, introduces us into the creation process of derivative work and recycling culture, and searches for the hidden truth of images.

This is an interesting and enigmatic work by Cañas that manages to transform us into pigs. After hypnotising us with a very carefully selected excess of images, this piece manages to make us think about the raw material of contemporary culture.

We are used to consuming visual information continuously. El perfecto cerdo is about the cultural salamis, the information conglomerates, the pork-like construction of information. In an almost metaphorical sense, it shows us that, as in the case of the pig, complete use can be made of every image. We are somewhat shocked by a piece that, according to its author, could be defined as part of the sci-fi-surrealist genre. There are various narrative trajectories, which, with the figure of the pig as the principal metaphor, compose along the different chapters of the DVD a style that is close to the documentary, experimental and art film, and the techniques of scratching and appropriation.

Humans and pigs walk down the treadmill, looking sometimes as if they are relating at a symbiotic level. Other times, it is the faces of artists and politicians that share the stage with pigs of all colours and sizes. On occassions, it seems as if the cut-and-paste machine has gone mad. But it is precisely this delirium which ends up putting both animals and humans in their right place, in a state of becoming-pig. The artist, with her work, is clearly looking to create a crypto-zoology of the everyday. She is hoping for her manipulated popular animal stories and fables to invade and cheer up our lives. Thus, we should not take this piece as sarcastic criticism of the artist’s role, but rather as a visual reflection on the ways that images function, that is, how image appropriation, intertextuality and reassembling works. This is a work of research about pork and excess, that is, about the creative mechanisms that sustain contemporary cultural production.

The piece is divided into 5 chapters, which can be watched separately or one after the other. Despite not being organised narratively, the work unfolds convincingly over the following parts:

1.    Habemus cerdo (We have a pig). 3’. Delirious introduction that takes us to the pork “cut-and-paste” planet.
2.    My Pigman. 2’24”. Art film featuring pigs from Japan and Ohio.
3.    Carne de estrella (Star meat). 3’17” One shot of crashing stars.
4.    Un día en el campo (One day in the country). 2’42”. A picnic day with Mr. Devil cheering things up.
5.    La Vie en Rose. 1’54”. Mortabella: the cold cuts’ vj.

www.animalario.tv is part of this project. It is a site dedicated to the culture of recycling; an archive of experimental visions that reinterpret the creative act within the context of the net.