Public Hearing for an Absent Chicken is a stop-motion video work that stages a formal institutional hearing for a chicken who is never present. Around a miniature meeting table, representatives of economy, taxation, consumers and the egg industry take their places, attendance is recorded, and the hearing proceeds despite the absence of the being whose life is being discussed.
The work reflects on animal rights, political representation and anthropocentrism, asking what happens when a living being can enter human institutions only through categories imposed upon it. The absent chicken moves through a sequence of definitions — animal, livestock, property, product, meat, taxable product — while its own statement is never received. An empty chair becomes the central figure of the work: a place formally reserved for participation, but without any actual possibility of being heard.
Using the restrained language of bureaucracy and the slightly absurd logic of institutional procedure, the video examines how easily absence can be interpreted as consent, and how decisions about non-human lives are made within systems built entirely around human interests.
Video was presented as artwork for "Art for the meat tax" 2026.
