Annotated text  No.3 Raisa Watkiss

Playing to the senses: Food as a performance Medium Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Performance Research 4(1) Taylor and Francis Ltd 1999 pp.1-5

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s essay in the journal performance Research allows us to encounter f

food as a performance act,initially exploring Points of Contact: Performance, Food and

cooking which was held in Cardiff in 1994. This work was of interest to me for two reasons

art as the act of performance and food as performance. I was aware of the works of Bobby

Baker and in the essay an in-depth exploration into her practices.

Bobby Baker performed Drawing on a mothers experience, in which she recited the painful story of her life,while flinging onto a white sheet the contents of her shopping bags-cold roast beef, tomato chutney, sponge fingers, brandy, black treacle, sugar, eggs, Guinness,flour, skimmed milk, tinned black currents, frozen fish pie and Greek strained sheep's milk yoghurt-finally rolling herself up in the sheet.

The essay is a narrative in itself discussing the activities, which took place during the 3 days

of the event. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s discusses notions of what could be performance food,

as a medium to communicate ideas. Firstly to perform is to do, to execute to carry out to

completion, to discharge duty. The performance is to make and serve food, secondly to

perform is to behave, whether a matter of habit or custom. As part of the act, the nuances are

explored ie social norms, the etiquette of ritual, laws governing the sale of certain liquor and

health regulations. This further explored religious and cultural activity with food, how does

society allow food to be consumed.

The essay allowed me to consider elements of taste, (sensory/cultural) tactile experiences, the

liberation of the idea. The food becomes the aesthetic experience of consumption. The essay

is engaging if you wish to broaden your horizons on notions of object, aesthetics and cultural

regulations. Food is style, cookbooks,shows, chiefs are elevated to socio-religious icons to be

worshipped adored followed and consumed. Food which is used in exhibitions, is not

necessarily available for consumption they help up as objects of critique. The essayist records

this as showpieces:

Food stylists produce a toxic cuisine that may well look more edible and delicious than the real food, particularly under the hot studio lights. Featured in images that's all food, magazines and cookbooks, dishes fashioned from substances never destined for the mouth ‘look good enough to eat they are a case of inedible spectacle.

Seeing cuisine as art, in this essay has broadened the horizons of what is performance how

we consume for sustenance,life-giving, emotional needs, transferring this into the realms of

the contemporary art is in itself a plausible notion.