I Got The Power!

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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.

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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!

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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].

The World is our Stage

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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.

One Word: Fetish

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Feeder Fetish: What is it? Who has it? Where does it come from? What’s the difference in liking food or becoming an obsession? Where’s the transition?  These questions are being explored through on going research and allowing me to create my own opinion on the matter.

Fetishes is something that I am not personally come across before, neither am I obsessed with anything for it to become a sexual desire of mine. This experiment is helping me understand the urgencies in which some people have with food. So what does the word fetish mean? You may get a different response to this question depending who you ask this to. However the dictionary states:-

a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body,  (Oxford University Press,2013)

With recent documentation from Channel 4, Big Fat Fetish in May 2012, which was an documentation on food fetish’s discussing their relationship with foods. Many people questioned their sexual desire towards food and is this seen as ‘normal?’ However this is something in which they saw as ‘normal’ and the fetish was a necessary sexual desire for them.  But do we know what the word ‘normal’ really means? Who makes the decision to define what normal is? This could lead into a debate of is the word fetish valid? The next step is to record a conversation between us and discuss the relevance of fetishes in todays context and how we connect differently to objects not necessary in a sexual desire but emotionally. When I first heard about Food fetish’s I automatically judged, I saw it as something weird, strange and not something I would ever understand, but through this process and research I am coming to a understanding everyone has different relationships with food.

Work Cited

Oxford University Press (2013) Fetish. [Online] Available from: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fetish [Accessed 4/12/13]