σπαραγμός: Recycled Poetry

Artist: Molly Pearson

In 2014, McDonald's confirmed that each of their burger contains 'meat from more than 100 cattle'. A cento (from the Latin 'one hundred') is a poem that consists of lines taken from existing literary texts fused to form a whole.

A cento, like a burger, is a hypertext generated through an act of

σπαραγμός (sparagmos) - the tearing of a living body to pieces, from which the installation derives its name.

σπαραγμός questions what it means to create a textual body comprised entirely of other bodies of work and, by positioning language as a material which can be recycled, challenges how we consume poetry.