Our Palace of Intestines
Couch, Amanda (2017) Our Palace of Intestines. [Performance]
Through the enactment, appropriation and subversion of the ancient ritual of extispicy, divination using the entrails, ‘Our Palaces of Intestines’ explores the theme of Queering Ritual by enacting ideas of interconnectedness, and otherness, a ‘transactional mingling of organism and environment’ (Shannon Sullivan, 2015).
At the centre is a large raised pie, a kind of sacrificial body. The audience is engaged in a communal breathing exercise. Hands are held on their belly which follows its inflation and deflation as the breath is channelled into the torso. There is an extispicy through the cutting of an ‘opening into the invisible world’ of the pie (Jeremy Naydler, 2009), to reveal a labyrinthine sausage, the ‘palace of the intestines’, which is examined/read, through the counting of its convolutions, tracing and drawing the revealed form, and a procession through the audience of the sausage against the body. Finally there is an inspection of the ruins.
Other outputs relating to this entry:
• Solo exhibition: ‘Extispicy in the Everyday’ at Lewis Elton Gallery, University of Surrey, July 2018.
• Participatory performance: ‘Our Palace of the Intestines’ at University of Surrey, July 2018.
The above will be part of a symposium organised by Dr. Adam Alston (University of Surrey), ‘Digesting Ritual: Food, Waste and the Body’ and kicks off a collaborative working relationship around ideas of decadence within performance practices.
• Jointly authored journal paper with Dr. Adam Alston Autumn/winter 2018.
• ‘Extispicy in the Everyday: An Art Project-in-Progress’ journal article, words and image, in ‘Food Feminism Fermentation’ issue of CuiZine: The Journal of Canadian Food Cultures / Revue des cultures culinaires au Canada. A fully open access e-journal published by McGill Library, double-blind peer review, forthcoming 2018.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8344-9668
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit View |