Udderly Branded

UDDERly Branded is a participatory street game/performance that forces us to reimagine Kalverstraat, which is also known as Amsterdam's most commercial shopping street, as a cattle chute. Kalverstraat translates to “Calve Street,” because it was initially a cattle market. The players of this game were either human, fitting “cow blinders,” or were visually overwhelmed/blinded by shopping signs, sales, logos, and the feeling of needing to consume. Each participant will be tagged like a cow, but with brands, and their identities will be minimized to a tag you wear. Through these roles, the participants' interactive performance piece begins to explore how consumer culture has reduced people to numbers, branding their bodies as they move through a system of consumption that they didn't design.

If humans are cattle, we understand ourselves as conditioned bodies that are trained to move, want to spend, and respond to visual cues. Inspired by Temple Grandin's work on cattle psychology and reading a chapter called "Cows" in her book "Animals Make Us Human," this project reveals that controlled environments, such as cattle chutes or shopping streets, limit perception and increase a sense of compliance. Urban theorists, such as Kevin Lynch, argue that cities shape how we move and what we see. Kalverstraat, with its consistent brands and logos everywhere, and the way it feels like you're boxed into this street, has changed people into unquestioning consumers, much like cattle being led calmly toward their slaughter.

This performance street activity on Kalverstraat helps us reimagine planting as not just a gardening act, but as a social and perceptual experience. Instead of planting herbs, this participatory performance is able to plant new awareness within Amsterdam's most commercialized streets. By having participants move through this street with the perception blinders or consumer blinders, it allows us to open our eyes to seeing how consuming culture can shrink our vision and herd us like cattle through this urban space. Replanting the city through this project enables us to reclaim ourselves and challenge the consumption flow. Just as a seed disrupts concrete, this game disrupts the flow of this street, in turn offering a new vision of the city of Amsterdam. This project strengthened my ability to merge critical theory, visual design, and site-specific research. By reframing an ordinary commercial street as a speculative metaphor, I gained a deeper understanding of how design can challenge societal norms and prompt reflection on everyday environments.