Yas King

Yas King is an artist based in Brooklyn, massaging the borderlands of poetry and environment humanities. Her manuscript, how do i work this dead thing, investigates consumption through playful innocence, gluttinous carnage, and ominous greek theatrics to forge a textural world of exploitation. The cow and the other nameless “things” rendered as product are contextualized by a performative, decentered voice that is lively, cerebral, and subversive. This work responds to the layered problems in both the act of industrial animal consumption and its critiques. The philosophical, political, social, biological, poetic, linguistic, subjective, and objective dimensions are obscured into a sensory chamber of energy. This body of work is not an attempt to persuade people to stop eating animal products, but rather acts as a portal to reconfigure our passive grasp of consumption, of industry, and of death. This project invites the reader to hear what is often silenced, see what is often erased, and taste the obscuration of flesh. How can we understand these dead creatures metamorphosed into carefully curated cuisine? How can we work within a system of oppression as a means to deface it? How can you write a dead thing? How do I work this dead thing?