Farming livelihood involves tagging every animal using numbers and barcodes. Tagging provides abstract data and is a method of accumulating knowledge about farm life-stock. Tagging in the form of language is used to negotiate social interfaces and hierarchies. Tagging functions until the person being tagged falls into the ‘other’ category; then tagging can dehumanise and negatively impact upon the recipient. ‘Tagging: Hurtful Not Helpful’ explores how the negative psychological weight of tagging can damage a person’s self-conception. The words ‘Nobody’, ‘Broken’, ‘Failure’, ‘Worthless’ and ‘Burden’ are purposefully embedded on oversized glass tags to signify the power of imprinting tags.
