IWY 11: GORGE - TAKEAWAY

5 September 2013
@ Pacitti Company Think Tank, Ipswich

with: Christa Holka, Johanna Linsley, R Justin Hunt, Foodgasm Berlin (Liz Rosenfeld and Misty Seriously)

On 5th September 2013, I'm With You was invited to Ipswich, to gorge in the Pacitti Company's new space.

Like gorge yourself silly, until the gorge rises, and like that's gorge, babez.

Part performance, part meal, Gorge brings bodies around a dinner table for a messy, politically-charged encounter with other eating bodies.

We think of The Futurist Cookbook, and the inedible, and the tasteless. We think of wholesome, nutritious Fluxus acts, and when we try to make a salad, we accidentally deep-fry it. We think of Kate Zambreno's provocation to taxonomise (women's) writing styles as anorexic or bulimic, and we think about our own disordered eating episodes until we want to throw up.

We think about Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, and food as performance. We think about recipes as scores, like Goat Island's task-based and essayistic performance practice.

We think about second-wave feminism, and dining with Judy Chicago. We think about sell-by dates and use-by dates and we shake off the idea that we're just a little bit past it.

We think about Nigella Lawson’s silky swagger, and just a little midnight snack. We think about a thousand middle class supper clubs, and we think about global food shortages. We think of Lauren Berlant on Mary Gaitskill, and food as incantation, and pleasures that make us feel bad. We think of Mervyn Peake, and Gormenghast, and hot, sweaty, murderous kitchens. We think about a comestible Gothic, an idea that both arrests us, and gets the juices flowing.

We are excellent hosts. We take hospitality seriously – the home and the guest constitute an important dynamic for us.

And we are good cooks, actually, unlike Zelda Fitzgerald, who struggles wittily with toast in her recipe for ‘Breakfast’. This time, tho, we're taking on the idea of the takeaway, the abundance of absence, and what's the takeaway on this meeting, hmmmm?

preliminary measures

oh there’s nothing like getting ready for a party

we are all mrs dalloway

we will buy the flowers ourselves

and indulge in pretty decisions

yes we complain about th eheat

but we like to think our voices

disclose personalities that are well up for it

greetings

Well, hello.

an alienated toast

In *Feast: Why Humans Share Food*, Martin Jones discusses the 'toast' as a 'psycho-active' ritual. The toast initiates the group of diners *as a group*. It gets them all, like, on the same wavelength.

In 1978, the People's Temple Agricultural Project, or 'Jonestown', became notorious when over 900 members of the cult died of cyanide poisoning consumed in a sugary red liquid.

In the US, 'drinking the Kool-Aid' has become synonymous with brainwashing and mass delusion, tho the powdered-drink brand is at pains to point out that the Jonestown residents in fact consumed 'Flavour-Aid' in the fatal moments.

They prepare the Kool-Aid, thinking about buy-ins and misperceptions, choices and consequences, groups and leaders and sharing.

You raise the glass. You bring it to your lips. You drink.