Social Vitamins and Minerals: How might food shape our everyday performances?

This post is written by Latitude 53’s Writer In Residence, Carolyn Jervis. She will be writing critically about Latitude 53 programming, the community and more on a regular basis over a six month term from April to September. Read more about the Writer In Residence program.

Food guides and official wisdom have been telling us for years to think about food visually and spatially. Protein should resemble a deck of cards, cheese: two fingers, a potato: your fist. And in the end, your daily intake should resemble a pyramid. To compliment these visual food serving size parameters is the optical understanding of what our bodies are supposed to look like as a result of this compliance.

Highly public figures like the United States’ First Lady and British Chef Jamie Oliver have been aggressively crusading to change the way people eat, and what they think of as appealing to ingest. It’s worth thinking about what the political and the official guidance has to offer us, or, what is does to us. As we move closer to the food-themed performative explorations that will take place at VisualEyez, up for discussion now is the way in which food can be a tool for understanding how we come to be ourselves. How do we see, and how do we perform, our sense of autonomy and uniqueness?

Let’s zoom out and think about food’s role in a broader sense, positioning it in the context of the other things we consume. Just like we digest food, reconstituting it into brand-new and replacement cells, social realities form the microscopic building blocks for how we are constituted as ourselves. Tiny bits of influence from these sources manifest as values and taste. They contribute to one’s inflection, mannerisms, and perhaps even the way you smile or string words together. I’m suggesting that the social vitamins and minerals form the very base of your sense of what’s experienced as individualism and choice. This becomes how we perform our everyday selves. So how might this shape our self-forming process?

I don’t mean to suggest that all of these bits and pieces, all external, have total dominion over our makings as individuals, but they inescapably form the foundation for how we understand what makes us who we are. I feel confident that the following statement will ring true to you: there are parts of our existence that feel so fundamental to our beings that it’s as though they are one of the threads that makes up the very fibres of our souls. This could be a favourite colour, the timbre of your voice, or how you experience your sexuality. But there’s a conflict here, right? It can’t possibly be an essential part of my being if it’s a social imperative.

Here’s where considering food can be helpful as we search to find the source of our quintessence. When I was living in Washington, I went to visit my housemate at the farmer’s market she manages. Crossroads Market is in one of the lowest income and highest crime areas that lie in Maryland just beyond the District’s borders.

The tiny stalls that make up the Wednesday market which lines a street shouldering a grocery store, represent just about all of the fresh, unprepared food available within the community. That’s right, even though the market is next to a grocery store. In contrast to walking past market regular Farmer John’s tiny tubular tomatoes and the made-before-your-eyes El Salvadorian papusas, entering the neighbouring chain store was like walking into a miniature and poorly stocked Costco. There was nothing in that establishment that wasn’t either wrapped in cellophane or had an expiry date of less than a year. The store seemed to specialize in generic, economy-sized chips and pop. So yes, the people who lived on the county border have the choice to get on a meandering bus to another community in order to buy more healthy food options for themselves and their family, but who in that location really has the time or the money? At least the weekly market comes to them, celebrates some of the community’s culinary traditions, and accepts food stamps.

So how does food inform the selfhood of those who live in the neighbourhood I describe? On the physical level, nutrient deficient diets act to give further disadvantage to those under and around the poverty line. But to compound that bodily harm are the related health problems –heart disease, diabetes, and so on. What must this do to someone’s ability to perform in such a manner that allows for physical mobility, to earn a living, or perform adequately in school if non-biodegradable food is your dietary reality? Of course there are broader social implications resulting from these diets that manifest through test scores and as cues for class-based discrimination, but for the purposes of my exploration today, let’s not tread in that territory and instead consider the consequences to self making and self understanding. I experience what I what and how I eat as a choice, not like a force-fed a duck destined to be foie gras. So that’s choice, right? I chew and swallow of my own free will, do I? But what about someone with an eating disorder, such as a compulsive eater, whose life circumstances have shaped eating to be a coping mechanism? What about my friend whose Auchwitz-survivor grandparents would make her eat to the point of physical pain, and she felt socially obligated to always comply? All of these practices shape our physical bodies and form those physical building blocks. I’m certain there are things shaping mine too miniscule and fundamental for me to see.

I’m pumped to explore the complexities of performance, selfhood, and food in the coming days of VisualEyez, and if you haven’t checked out the schedule, you can do so here. I hope to see you in the audience from the 16th to the 19th so we can consume and digest some performance art together.

1. barrymaurices liked this
2. latitude53 posted this