Presence of Food
ARTISTS
Miche Fabre Lewin in collaboration with musicians Anna Mudeka and Nathanial Mann
COMMISSION
Arts Council England
MEDIA
Durational gastronomic research project, image-sound installation and performance ‘Cooking with the Ancestors’ with Anna Mudeka as part of Black History Month Norfolk, UK.
Presence of Food has evolved from Miche’s longterm devotional practice with food and ritual. Through durational happenings, installations and multimedia artworks these food rituals enliven feeling-thinking-being as we experience ourselves as part of the animate Earth. Making visible the sacred and transformative potential of food as a convivial praxis creates the conditions for practising a sympoiethics of care in the everyday.
“The Arts Council project has offered Miche the opportunity to open up the taste, touch, smell and visual power of food with the aural and connect to the sacred and spiritual through the material of sound and the vibration of matter. Audiences can immerse and connect with themselves and each other on another frequency to discover new communing experiences between the intimate and the expansive.” ANDY ROBINSON | Head of Strategy at FutureCity
In collaboration with multi-instrumentalist musicians Anna Mudeka and Nathaniel Mann, culinary choreographies of vessels, artefacts, food preparation and cooking become fields of exploration with sound recording, ritual process combined with visual documentation to evoke the sacred and transformative potential of food.
With Anna Mudeka, the gastrosonice improvisations were initiated as an honouring of the ancestors and the sacred of food and music. Together, they created invocations with voice, musical instruments, culinary rhythms and edible compositions which nurture bodymind, soul and Earth-kinship.
What draws you to this collaborative project, Anna? “Both food and music drew me to the project, reminding me of Zimbabwe gatherings where food, music and song come together. Food and music are so crucial to our lifebeing, and as a musician I am excited to be exploring this relationship at a deeper level in a collaboration with Miche and her love for food, the colours, the flavours. GastroSonic brings me to another way of thinking of how to make my performances more of an experience. It also enables me to experiment and progress as a multi-instrumentalist artist, as well as to grow my appreciation of food and what the land gives us.”
With Nathaniel Mann, Miche’s GastroSonic improvisations in the KitchenStudio unfolded sequences of sound cameos to cultivate deep listening. The vibrational chamber of a kitchen was recorded with all its resonating qualities - an egg, knives, a washing up bowl, a lemon pared and squeezed, cabbage chopping. Miche worked with finger bells to enliven the bodily rhythms and gestures of her cooking body in a syncopation with utensils, culinary processes, and sizzling pans. Later, voice work to add vocal texture and enhance the culinary and artistic expression of the cooking body.
What inspired you to work on this collaborative project, Presence of Food? “Your environment, the way you live, the holistic nature of your combined practice creates space, hospitality in which I become immersed and learn from - all were a beautiful honour which activates me. Being with you draws together my flow state of knowledge and experience. You infect me with belief - the state you create for me to exist within every single process, the food we eat, how we eat it, where the onion skin falls, how water is poured. It is about this essence, the sacredness of my relationship to life which inspires my ability to lucidly express myself.”
