Force Fed Till Sick

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The aim of ‘Feeder’ was to be a task based performance where 3 feeders would feed 3 gainers for a durational time of 2 hours. This is precisely what happened on Wednesday 11th December at 7:30pm – though I shall not forget to mention we were stopped at 1 hour 40 minutes for ethical reasons.

photo      (Staging of Performance. Taken by Abigail Dawson: 11.12.13)

Even though the outcome of the task was so unpredictable we all knew how much of a challenge it was going to be. What a challenge it was. The 3 gainers were fed calorific food such as cheesy pasta, cake, chicken korma and lasagne. It took approximately 1 hour until the first gainer vomited – me. From a gainer’s point of view, the task appeared relatively easy at the beginning for the first 20 minutes. The food was fairly warm and enjoyable, no struggle eating the forkfuls just yet. All the different foods were being mixed, and at first this seemed like a brilliant idea as each food was a different taste and you weren’t going to get bored of it. Then as time went on those foods were being mixed inside the stomach, and with the mix of acidic orange juice and full fat Pepsi, the stomach started to churn and consequently there was a battle with our bodies to keep that food inside the stomach. It was no longer an easy task, and the food no longer appeared appetising to us. The forks filled with food would stay in front of our 3 faces until we were able to eat it. Because the forks were kept in front of us, there was a feeling of pressure and need to eat, like we had to finish everything we were given, something that I was taught when younger otherwise I was not allowed to leave the table. There was complete silence other than the sound of us eating and the noise of the feeders clattering the serving spoons, serving up more food. When we did feel sick there was no real way of communicating with our feeder, maybe a look of plead, but we couldn’t talk. The feeders had all the control, while we were tied to our chairs so we didn’t even have the use of our arms. The feeders had to be so in control that they could tell when we were going to be sick, maybe by the look on our faces, they then went to get a sick bag and placed it in front of us – just like the fork – until we were sick. Unfortunately for me, this happened and I vomited. My feeder then proceeded to serve more food on to a plate and carry on feeding me – which is why our performance was stopped. Now it must be noted that all 3 of us gainers could has refused to eat, the fork would have just stayed there in front of us, but we were able to keep our mouths shut. The pressure we felt, especially in front of an audience kept us eating, we were in no mind set to think of our own safety and when to stop, so someone else had to do it for us. Something we were all grateful for. Normally you’d think that “the act of swallowing is voluntary” (Fisher and Bender 1979, p. 93), however under such pressure in a public performance it feels like that power is taken away from you and you have no choice but to swallow what is in your mouth, whether you feel like it is going to make you vomit or not.

Here are two video blogs I made on the day of ‘Feeder’ to show how I was feeling, one before the performance and one after:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4D3JyKpzAc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgCgpuiiUUk

(Abigail Dawson, 2013)

This performance was so much more than showing the feeder/gainer relationship though. It was very personal to each of us, and how we all view food and our bodies. For a 20 year old woman living in a western society in the twenty first century, there is a pressure to keep our bodies looking good. We all love eating food, but we make sure we eat the right things so we don’t put weight on. This feeder fetish to us appears very confusing, a lifestyle none of us can relate to as we don’t personally believe that the bigger we get in size the sexier and more comfortable we feel. I certainly don’t believe that anyone that large could be happy with themselves, especially if they are at a size where they are immobile.  Through this lifestyle, they appear to learn that if they are to be loved (the gainers) – and this is what they seek for the most in life – they must eat/be fed. Their daily life is not about nutrition and keeping their body healthy, as they certainly do not eat the right foods. As stated in The Value of Food, “some foods are not essential for the functioning of the body but we do enjoy eating them” (Fisher and Bender 1979, p. 31), this fetish is about pleasure and gratification so the only foods that are consumed are those which satisfy.

“Rituals…help people deal with difficult transitions, ambivalent relationships, hierarchies, and desires that trouble, exceed, or violate the norms of daily life” (Schechner 2002, p. 52)

Looking back to earlier readings and blog posts, we kept to the notion of rituals. The act of eating is a daily ritual, something we do since we are born. We put this ritual to play in performance, it “gives people a chance to temporarily experience the taboo, the excessive, and the risky” (Schechner 2002, p. 52) as a group we were able to experience the fetish momentarily, not sexually, but what it would be like to put in the roles in the feeder relationship. Feeding and being fed is ritual linked to a parent and child relationship – one that is created from a very early age. The feeder and gainer take these roles on. It was our aim to explore this daily ritual – eating – delve into our own eating habbits, our personal relationship to food, and how it changes for those involved in such a fetish.

Work Cited

Abigail Dawson (2013) Vlog 1 (before) [Online Video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4D3JyKpzAc [Accessed 13 December 2013]

Abigail Dawson (2013) Vlog 2 (after) [Online Video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgCgpuiiUUk [Accessed 13 December 2013]

Fisher, P. and Bender, A. (1979) The Value of Food (3rd Ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press

Schechner, R. (2002) Performance Studies: an Introduction (2nd Ed.), London and New York: Routledge

It’s all over.

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After becoming a ‘gainer’ for the piece I can safely say it was one of the most difficult tasks I have ever completed. Not only was the quantity hard to deal with, but the mixture of food and having no control over what you were being given was certainly challenging. One member was sick, which we pre-empted and the feeding element was mentally challenging for those involved. This fetish is certainly complicated psychologically and something we will never fully be able to understand.

‘Before strictly human relations are established, certain relations have already been determined. They are taken from whatever nature may offer as supports, supports that are arranged in themes of opposition. Nature provides – I must use the word – signifiers, and these signifiers organise human relations’ (Lacan, 1977)

We formed relations as ‘feeders’ and ‘gainers’; however it was not a pleasurable bond. It was something we had to endure. We managed to last 1hr 40 minutes with the piece, and it seems we tested more than just the feeder/gainer relationship. We also tested ourselves physically and mentally, the sense of control and the audience.

photo (3)

                          (‘The Set and Film’ Taken by: Kirsty Jakins 11.12.13)

Works Cited

Lacan, J. (1977) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. London: The Hogarth Press Ltd.

And for dessert…

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Our final performance: three feeders, three gainers and two hours to eat as much as individually possible. 11th December 2013

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The performance: Taken by Darren Page 11/12/13

Due to the result of the drawing of straws, for the performance I was given the role of feeder, much to my relief. In the lead up to the performance we filmed various sequences of the three feeders in a supermarket buying the food which would be consumed and consequently the cooking and preparation.

 

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Preparation of food: Taken by Kirsty Taylor 10/12/13

It was important for this footage to be part of our performance so the audience could see our process and how the food had got to the table. We set up our performance space as it was for our work in progress with the addition of lighting and video footage set behind the gainers. This meant they could not see what had been put into the food they were about to consume reflecting the gainer/feeder fetish in which the feeder could be in control of what went into the food they can eat. The control of the feeders continued as we tied our gainer to the chair using an item associated with the outfit they are wearing. My gainer, Abbi, wore gym clothing and so she was tied to the chair using socks.

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Gainer and feeder: Taken by Jess Jarvis 11/12/13

After we had laid the table and reheated all the hot food our performance could begin. The hot food added an important sense to the performance and allowed the audience to have some direct connection to the piece, the sense of smell, “Smell is said to be the most direct route to memory, emotions, mate choice and the immune system” (Di Benedetto, 2010, p93). By placing the food in close proximity to the audience, not only could they see exactly what was being eaten but can experience the food through smells thereby creating thoughts and feelings as Di Benedetto suggests, “Taste, like smell, can evoke memories that are laden with emotional qualities” (2010, p114). Consequently each audience member can create an individual personal response.

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Display of food: Taken by Kirsty Taylor 11/12/13

To heighten the control we were aiming for, the three feeders held a neutral facial expression whilst the gainers reacted naturally to the task they were completing which was received positively by the audience as they were real, honest reactions. Because the performance was of a nature which couldn’t be rehearsed, it was a task trying to keep a straight face whilst deciding what food I should feed to Abbi. I was tentative at first deciding how much to put on the plate and what combination of food I should use, but gradually I became more confident and sure of what to do. It also became more clear which food my gainer preferred over others.  As the performance went on, it became clear it was going to be a much harder task than anticipated. The physical struggle of the gainers and the mental guilt of the feeders increased dramatically and reached a climax when Abbi had to be sick. This was a shock for us all; although sick bags were in place we never expected they would be used as we didn’t think it would get to that point. I tried my hardest to remain in control of the situation despite the tidal wave of emotions; I felt panicky, guilty and full of concern yet still had the overbearing apprehension of keeping the performance going and completing my task as feeder. Although we never focused on the audience and made a deliberate choice not to make eye contact, it was at that point some members of the audience had to leave, clearly uncomfortable with what had just happened. Unexpectedly, our performance was cut short and stopped forty-five minutes before the expected finish.

Although it was not planned, we were all relieved the performance was over. We were all exhausted; we had pushed our bodies to the limits of what we could have handled either mentally or physically. The performance may not have ended how we anticipated, but we were all proud of the effort we had put into both the process and final piece.

Works Cited

Di Benedetto, Stephen (2010) The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre UK:Routledge

Experimenting with Final Ideas

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Carrying on from our previous experiment with food, we found ourselves very interested in the idea of the feeder fetish, and we wish to root our final performance around this concept. We all watched the documentary ‘Fat Girls and Feeders’ (2003), it explores the sub-culture of ‘feeders’ who get sexual gratification from feeding large women (the gainer), and encouraging them to gain weight to an extent where they become immobile and put their own lives at risk. It is thought that the stomach is seen as another ‘sexual organ’ and the bigger it got the sexier it appears. The feeders would document the obese women’s weight gain, and it was clear that the bigger they became, the more desperate they were for personal contact. The main aim for the feeder is to get them as big as possible, and for the gainer is to keep them happy.  For the couple “the experience of easting is intertwined with their experience of close human contact with the provider of the food-the bodily warmth, the touch of the other’s flesh, their smell, the sounds they make- and the emotions and sensations aroused by this experience”, while they found it sensual and sexual, their key focus was all about “enjoying filling the stomach” and watching it grow to an unsafe size (Lupton 1996, p. 7).

We found this feeder fetish lifestyle very strange, as none of us personally found it pleasurable. In the type of society we live in today it is all about being skinny and looking good and in doing so you need to keep count of the calories and eat the right food. We live in a society where “limiting one’s food intake is an effective way of both demonstrating self-discipline and of working towards the idealized slim, long-living, youthful body that is so valued in western societies” (Lupton 1996, p. 155). Whereas in this fetish lifestyle the feeder would feed the woman large quantities of calorific food, which would consequently make them gain a dangerous amount of weight over a long period of time, self-discipline and control for the consumer does not exist . I relate food with something that is meant to be seen as pleasurable, it is something social if you go out for a meal, something you enjoy, but where are the boundaries between pleasure and pain here? An average portion of food may be something enjoyable to consume, but what happens when that portion doubles or triples in size? It is no longer satisfying but instead becomes demanding on your body, pushing its limits. Because we as a group do not find this a sexual fetish, we were interested in how being fed would feel for us personally, and also what it would physiologically be like to be the feeder. We were interested by the fact that it was the feeder in the relationship that cooked and prepared all of the food, the control is in their hands, and the gainer would just eat it.

We had the opportunity to do our own individual experiments with the class so I took chance to not only experience being fed but also how someone would feel feeding me. I bought a packet of sweets, a packet of monster munch and a packet of chocolate fingers. Obviously I could not give the feeder complete control of what food they had as I had to buy it previously for the experiment, however I decided to blindfold myself so there would be some mystery out of the options I gave them. I did this experiment various times lasting only five minutes as it would be a one on one session with me and another member of the class. When entering the space I mentioned to each person that they could choose what items of food they wanted to feed me and that they had complete control over the quantity that was chosen. I left a feedback sheet in the room for each person to write down how they felt when feeding me; these are some of the responses:

“Felt like a mum feeding a kid – would be good to use different tastes, smells and temperatures”

“Nervous, a bit weird not going to lie. Could never do it as a sexual thing”

“Hungry and in control of everything, especially with the lack of sight”

photo

(Taken by Tiffany Thompson: 22. 11. 13)

I found that many people felt like they were a mother feeding a kid, as this is a relationship we have all experienced as a child. For me, personally, it was very strange being fed, especially the lack of control that I had.

For our final performance three of us will be the ‘feeders’ and the other three the ‘consumers’, they will be chosen at random by picking straws – something we have already done and can have documented in the video shown below. The feeders will be paired up with a consumer, and through a durational time of two hours, they will feed the consumer food. This food will be pre-bought and prepared before the performance; it will be presented luxuriously on a table in front of both feeder and consumer. It is important we show the “preparation, presentation, and consumption and its full range of sensory pleasures” so we will have a video projected in the background of the food being bought and prepared (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2007, p. 85). The idea is to explore our own personal relationship with food and the fetish. What happens if we were put into the feeder/consumer relationship? Our performance aims to push the boundaries of our bodies, and expose to the audience the act of eating – which is usually something private. It will be unpredictable, exciting and at the same time terrifying. I have no doubt that our performance will be anything but easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdqz0-Dl2IA

(LaurenWithTheDramaTattoo, 2013)


Works cited

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (2007) ‘Making sense of food in performance: the table and the stage’ in Senses in Performance, ed. Sally Banes and Andre Lepecki, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 71-91

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

Lupton,Deborah (1996) Food, the body and the self. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

 

A La Carte.

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Mains

Homemade Double Cheese Lasagne
Homemade Double Cheese Macaroni and Cheese
Homemade Chicken Tikka Curry
Chips
Pilau Rice
Homemade Mashed Potato
Meat Feast Pizza
Sausage and Mash Ready Meal
Gravy

Deserts

Homemade Brownies
Homemade Chocolate Cake
Homemade Cup Cakes
Tea Cakes
Strawberry Jelly
Vanilla Custard
Strawberry Angel Delight
Jam Dohnuts
Lemon and Custard Dohnuts
Chocolate Fingers
Chocolate Bars
Chocolate Buttons-White and Milk
Chuppa-Chup Lollypops
Double Cream

Drinks

Orange Juice (from concentrate)
Pepsi Cola

The Performance

Photo by Lizzy Hayes, 2013