Mimi Ọnụọha: 40% of Food in the US is Wasted (How the Hell is That Progress, Man?)

Mimi Ọnụọha’s 40% of Food in the US is Wasted (How the Hell is That Progress, Man?) is an interactive video composed of clips from the 1950s to the 1980s drawn from footage in the Prelinger Archives—a freely accessible repository of films documenting twentieth-century American cultural and social history—and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Focusing on the technological optimism of big agriculture, the sampled films betray a narrative of agricultural systems geared toward ever-increasing production rather than equitable distribution. The artwork’s title references the USDA’s own estimates of 30 to 40 percent of food going to waste and questions the upbeat messaging of its videos. Presented in a repetitive grid formation, the video clips can be advanced by viewers with continuous clicking, underscoring the redundancies built into the process of automation.

Retrospectively, the archival videos function as a reality check to the solutions they proclaim, revealing practices that would be considered problematic by today’s standards. Documenting the demographics of the people working in the fields, at the conveyor belts, and in roles of oversight, the footage openly displays systemic conditions of production and labor. Ọnụọha’s 40% of Food in the US is Wasted (How the Hell is That Progress, Man?) continues the artist’s practice of interrogating and exposing the logic of technology-driven “progress.”

Music by Jules Faife