On Thursday we drew straws to decide which of us would be the feeders and which of us would be the eaters or gainers. The idea behind the drawing of the straws was control. We wanted who ever ended up eating to have had as little control over this decision as possible, to correlate with the feeder/gainer relationship in which the feeder has complete control over the gainers food intake.

Photo by Lauren Watson, 2013

Having said in a previous post that I was not particularly comfortable with the ‘gainer’ side of the relationship it was no big surprise how relieved I was to draw the long straw and become a feeder.

(LaurenWithTheDramaTattoo, 2013)

I do not expect our performance to be easy for anyone, in fact I expect it will push each and every member of our group mentally. For me I imagine the main challenge to be the control: will I become used to the level of control I have? Will I end up liking the control? Would it be wrong for me to like the control?

Each feeder then chose a “gainer” to feed during the performance. I chose Lauren Watson. From that moment on she was my gainer-the person I will have control of during the performance.

The next step for me as a feeder is deciding what food to buy and make for the gainers. With butter, cheese, chocolate and pleanty of carbohydrates in mind me, Kirsty T, and Jess made our way to Morrisons supermarket to buy our food. We decided to video record this experience, as well as the process of us making the food so that it could be played behind the performers on the day of the performance. The idea behind this was to show the audience the extent to which we, as feeders, had control over what they gainers were being fed. Shopping bags full, we left Morrisons, actually quite excited to cook our food!

Photo by Tom Baines, 2013

Works Cited

(LaurenWithTheDramaTattoo (2013) Feeder Contemporary Experimental: Drawing Straws [Online Video] Available from http://youtu.be/mdqz0-Dl2IA [Accessed 9 December 2013].