What is performance? This can be seen as a bit of silly question as there is no right or wrong answer. Everything could be justified as a performance; to do something to a certain level is seen as performing. So what happens when we put it into the context of food? This is something we do in our day to day lives, who’s to say it is a performance?
Although food is something that is in cooperated frequently in my daily routine, I’ve never questioned it as a performance, I don’t do it to perform I merely do it because my body needs it. Although put into social situation, usually food related, I will be influenced as to what I should eat, whether that is because of where I am or who I am with, this could potentially mean I am thinking of the audience, the other person, the reaction as to what I eat, allowing me to think through my actions and become something that I am not, this self-control is lost, which is something we are looking to explore thoroughly in our performance task.
Our performance is a performative task in which the Feeder has to feed the Gainer the food for two hours without losing self-control and becoming dis-orientated. The Gainers task is to eat the food given to by their feeders, pushing themselves physically. Although this isn’t the traditional aspect of performance it is still a performance for people to watch and interact with.
‘A “performance” may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way of the other participants. Taking a particular participant and his performances as a basic point of reference, we may refer to those who contribute to the other performances as the audience, observers, or co-participants. The pre-established pattern of action which is unfolded during a performance and which may be presented or played through on other occasions may be called ‘a part’ or a ‘routine’…a social relationship is likely to arise.’ (Goffman,1959, 15-16)
The above quote will help people to understand the concept of our performance; our piece explores the role the audience plays within our experimental. Not only are we setting out to achieve relationship between the Feeders and Gainers, but naturally do to the nature of our piece, we will create a relationship with the audience members, pushing the emotional intelligence of some audience members. The audiences contribution listening and being able to see one another will help other audience members act in a certain way, making them perform in a certain way. This is one of our reasons why we want our lights to be on the audience too, making them a participant in our experiment.
Work Cited
Goffman.E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.