Having not felt like eating, but eaten, I sat down to eat / tea …

Durational work including performance-based meal for 6 guests (approx. 30 minutes). Round timber and form-ply table, timber chairs and prototypes, egg crate and timber stools, white shirt and stitching, glassware, crockery, cutlery, paper menus, food and drink. To Elizabeth Wilson, the gut is “the nervous system extends well beyond the skull, and as it so travels through the body it takes the psyche with it.” (Psychosomatics, p.47) The enteric nervous system (which handles digestion) develops profound psychological responses that cannot be explained simply by a brain-based central nervous system. This work explores how eating can become a performative mode of (gut) re-thinking cancer as condition of bodies being eaten, away from cognitively-based metaphysics towards a psychical engagement with the body, whose seemingly most automatic functions are so vital and complex.