The Performance
Having thought about it for weeks, and being nervous about it for days, I was surprised at how calm I felt just before the performance. I even found a small part of myself wishing that I could eat some of the food that I had so lovingly made for my gainer as I was setting it out on the table. I can safely say that my feelings toward the food were very much changed two hours later as it sat, mixed up, cold and congealed on the now less than attractively adorned table.
The performance started at 7 30pm on Wednesday the 11th of December, with the three gainers bound to their chairs with materials that related to their outfit. My feeder, Lauren, was tied by napkins. My self and the other two feeders stood beside our feeder, straight faced, plate in hand.
Photo by Darren Page, 2013
What was going on in my head was a far less calm image. What would I feed her first? Should it be sweet or savoury? Dry or sloppy? Should I use a spoon, a fork or my hands? Decision time! I chose curry, which was of course savoury and sloppy and I fed it to her with a fork. I imediatley felt very uncomfortable about the whole situation. Within seconds I had spilt curry down her dress and I wanted to clean it up. The fork hit her teeth and I wanted to apologise. I finished feeding her the plate of food and I felt compelled to ask her if she would like any more, or wanted anything else. I went to the food table and I put chocolate in a bowl and I fed it to her with my hands. I went back to the food table and I picked up pizza and crisps. Back and forth picking up different foods, savoury and sweet, what ever took my fancy. But I wanted so badly to adhere to the social conventions that I have been brought up to respect and conform to. I found myself agreeing with Mary Douglas when she states that “the consumption of food is a ritual activity” (Lupton, 1996, p.9), and I was altering that ritual. The simple act of mixing savoury and sweet foods instead of having them separate, in set portions of a planned meal seemed almost anarchic. I was neglecting the social structure that is in place to “create[s] order out of potential disorder” (Lupton, 1996, p. 9).
Photo by Lizzy Hayes, 2013
The extent of the disorder stopped being an internal thought, and became the focus of our piece after one hour, when Abbi, one of the gainers was sick. Fighting to keep my face expressionless as had previously been planned I found that the situation, (which we had considered as a possibility, not a likelyhood) was dealt with quickly and effectively, but it was still a situation out of my hands. It was then I realized that I had far less control than I thought I did. I had control over what I was wearing and what my gainer was eating. That was it. I did not have control over how she felt. I did not have control over how I felt. I did not have control over the audience and their reactions. Considering that I had been worried about exploiting my control, I felt naïve to have thought that I would have any more control than any one else in the room. Because even though the gainers were tied to a chair and being force fed food, it was not up to us, or them whether the food stayed down or not, because as Scheer suggests, “The body’s capacities to endure certain forms of experience are not incidental…but are curatorially and compositionally problematic…” (Scheer, 2012, p. 2). Abbi’s body had passed it’s capacity and rejected the food.
But as the saying goes, the show must go on! Well in fact, it didn’t have to go on at all. Abbi could have stopped eating. But even though she chose to keep eating, soon after, the performance was stopped earlier than scheduled due to ethical reasons.
Works Cited
Lupton, M (1996) Food, the Body and the Self. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Scheer, E (2012) Introduction. The end of spatiality or the meaning of duration. Performance Research 17.5.