MOUTH - an Installation and Performance
MOUTH
My mouth and I have had a long relationship,
long before anything my mind can remember,
but the body remembers, the mouth remembers,
it remembers the first food, the first meal.
My mouth remembers the tastes, smells and flavours.
My mouth remembers the seasons.
The right season, when each animal and plant is fat.
The right season to collect flowers, fruit or seed.
My mouth and I have had a long relationship,
long before anything my mind can remember,
but the body remembers, the mouth remembers,
it remembers the first food, the first meal.
My mouth remembers the tastes, smells and flavours.
My mouth remembers the seasons.
The right season, when each animal and plant is fat.
The right season to collect flowers, fruit or seed.
Mouth, performance art for voice, music, food and photographic installation was first exhibited for the See Change Art Festival held in Huskisson in 2019 The above video was developed as a record of the event but was later included as a part of online exhibitions and performances for the New Zealand Symposium of Gastronomy held in Palmerstone North in 2020 and as a part of the Food Matters International Conference held at Carleton University in Ottawa Ca. in 2021.
Mouth started as an experimental art program for our local arts festival, which wanted artists to produce performance and or exhibitions under the theme, “What the body knows (but may have forgotten)". Natalie McDonagh had suggested this theme to the attendees at a long lunch that was held in my garden one Sunday. Possibly inspired by the food and wine and in the best of all possible worlds we would have been inspired by Rossini, who is quoted as saying
“To eat, to love, to sing, and to digest:
these are the four acts in the opera we call life,
and which vanishes like the bubbles in champagne”.
Annette Tesoriero and I agreed to develop a program for this experimental section of the See Change Festival. Annette felt that we should contribute via the combination of interests, singing and food. We came up with MOUTH.
The development of this theme into a workable program had considerable ups and downs until one day; to quote Natalie :
" The animating effects of the somatic milieu in which Mouth manifests can be seen in the visceral nature of the visual art Max makes and his crossing the threshold into scripting and performing a monologue. The series of more than thirty striking images that Max produced are performance photography. The photographs are evidence of a performance in which Max goes shopping for lipsticks ( is astounded by the expense of some); forages and collects props - plants, feathers, dead fish, pasta, giant nuts, all manner of things. The make-up is applied, the props are set, repeated acts of posing and photographing take place."
For my part, as each image was associated with some memory or recollection of some part of my life, stories were developed around the images.
For Annette, she developed her role on the uses of the mouth, so as an actor and singer, there were two main roles, a mime performance on the uses of the mouth and singing an appropriate song from an opera.
To include the serving of food was relatively easy in relation to the photographs, as each image involved food.
Then , to quote Marquis de Sade - “Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other”. The decision was made to include the “erotic mouth" and Annette decided to sing “ The Kiss” from a Rossini opera. Finally, as taste is something we anticipate and infer from how things look, feel, smell and sound, as we use these sensory experiences to tell, before putting something into the mouth, if it is fresh, ripe, or rotten, if it is raw or cooked or if it is properly prepared, we included a section on the science of the mouth.
After trying to balance the time taken to serve food, minimise gaps in performance and staying within the scheduled performance time, the menu was developed; tastings included molasses, Chinese salted plums, potato chips for the crunch, oysters, figs and as a final treat, prunes that had been stuffed with almond paste then poached in chocolate and white port. Red, white and sparkling wines were served at appropriate times.
CLICK HERE (mouth_a_memory_of_a_performance_script_2021.pdf ) - To see the performance script on s separate page
Below are some the images - to enlarge click on individual image, then use side arrows to scroll to adjacent images
Mouth started as an experimental art program for our local arts festival, which wanted artists to produce performance and or exhibitions under the theme, “What the body knows (but may have forgotten)". Natalie McDonagh had suggested this theme to the attendees at a long lunch that was held in my garden one Sunday. Possibly inspired by the food and wine and in the best of all possible worlds we would have been inspired by Rossini, who is quoted as saying
“To eat, to love, to sing, and to digest:
these are the four acts in the opera we call life,
and which vanishes like the bubbles in champagne”.
Annette Tesoriero and I agreed to develop a program for this experimental section of the See Change Festival. Annette felt that we should contribute via the combination of interests, singing and food. We came up with MOUTH.
The development of this theme into a workable program had considerable ups and downs until one day; to quote Natalie :
" The animating effects of the somatic milieu in which Mouth manifests can be seen in the visceral nature of the visual art Max makes and his crossing the threshold into scripting and performing a monologue. The series of more than thirty striking images that Max produced are performance photography. The photographs are evidence of a performance in which Max goes shopping for lipsticks ( is astounded by the expense of some); forages and collects props - plants, feathers, dead fish, pasta, giant nuts, all manner of things. The make-up is applied, the props are set, repeated acts of posing and photographing take place."
For my part, as each image was associated with some memory or recollection of some part of my life, stories were developed around the images.
For Annette, she developed her role on the uses of the mouth, so as an actor and singer, there were two main roles, a mime performance on the uses of the mouth and singing an appropriate song from an opera.
To include the serving of food was relatively easy in relation to the photographs, as each image involved food.
Then , to quote Marquis de Sade - “Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other”. The decision was made to include the “erotic mouth" and Annette decided to sing “ The Kiss” from a Rossini opera. Finally, as taste is something we anticipate and infer from how things look, feel, smell and sound, as we use these sensory experiences to tell, before putting something into the mouth, if it is fresh, ripe, or rotten, if it is raw or cooked or if it is properly prepared, we included a section on the science of the mouth.
After trying to balance the time taken to serve food, minimise gaps in performance and staying within the scheduled performance time, the menu was developed; tastings included molasses, Chinese salted plums, potato chips for the crunch, oysters, figs and as a final treat, prunes that had been stuffed with almond paste then poached in chocolate and white port. Red, white and sparkling wines were served at appropriate times.
CLICK HERE (mouth_a_memory_of_a_performance_script_2021.pdf ) - To see the performance script on s separate page
Below are some the images - to enlarge click on individual image, then use side arrows to scroll to adjacent images
MOUTH - Diptych made for Shoalhaven Regional Gallery exhibition
Images from mouth were also made into a single edition Diptych at the request of the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery for a contemporary art work to be included in Contemporary Now exhibition. In the end the work was not required.
Mouth – When the Wattle blooms 2019 Diptych Edition 1 of 1 Giclée print, archival inkjet on Hahnemuhle photo rag 112 cm w x 76 cm h