Microbial Theatricality: <i>Selfmade</i>, Celebrity, and Scales of Hunger

Author:

McQueen Elizabeth

Abstract

In 2013, Christina Agapakis, a UCLA postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology, swabbed celebrities' armpits, belly buttons, and feet for microbial samples to make cheese. The “human-made” cheese resulted in the art exhibition Selfmade, a sensory installation inviting audience members to confront intimate and smelly relationships between humans and microbes, all through fermented edible matter. Artist Olafur Eliasson, food journalist Michael Pollan, and baker and writer Ruby Tandoh all offered their bodies as cultivators for cheese production. The prominent figures, and their companion bacteria, validate and complicate the relations that Selfmade claims to produce. At first glance, the installation invites a sensory entanglement with nonhuman matter.  There is, of course, more than meets the eye. Hunger, eating, and even cooking are not exclusive to humans but perhaps intrinsic to planetary life. Human, celebrity, and microbial actors blur across the many mediums materialized in the food performance. As much as Selfmade is a nonhuman performance, it is also because of its very humanness, celebrity, and theatricality that we find an essential entanglement in food and performance studies: a nearly imperceptible (or non-sensible) proximity of human and nonhuman, at the microscopic scale.

Publisher

Performance Studies International

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3