 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Angela Dorrer
ON COOKIES
“First skepticism, then interest. As a cookie, normal. In the mouth, a little aversion. Then: art!” (1)
Dough is formed in the mouth, baked and then offered as a cookie to eat. Teeth, tongue and lips are utilized like a sculptor’s hammer and chisel. The process is sensually, not visually, controlled with the help of the senses of touch and smell and the power of imagination. In contrast to traditional sculpture that renders the exterior of the human body in a lasting material, these cookies represent the human body’s hollow and negative spaces. They are fragile and ephemeral and dissolve in the private interaction with the viewer or consumer.
“The aftertaste of a sweet kiss with an unknown person.” (1)
In relation to the mouth-formed cookies, the connection between Eucharist and cannibalism, images of distribution, devouring and reconciliation concern me. “The tie between the multiplication of loaves and the Eucharist is well known. It is established by another of Christ’s statements, bringing together body and bread, ‘This is my body’. By surreptitiously mingling the theme of devouring with that of satiating that narrative is a way of taming cannibalism.” (2) And if Christ distributed his body to eat – who is the conqueror and who is the conquered – the one who eats or the one who is eaten? “To incorporate the alien in these instances is to admit poison into the body: The dualism of eater/eaten is not transcended or sublimated by internalization, but perpetuated. In such instances to eat the Father is the same as to be eaten by him: the complement of Freud’s Myth is that of Saturn devouring his children.” (3)
“I first ate half of these minicakes, then I looked at the note, and … eeech! They’re bitten into!” I said to my mother. ‘And by a student,’ said my mother.” -- Daniel
In the cookieboxes, the cookies I formed in my mouth are offered to eat in exchange for personal commentaries on edible objects. The reactions vary widely and range from great intimacy and openness to insecurity and rejection. I archive the commentaries and exhibit them in exhibitions or on the Internet.
The cookies function in this context as an impetus and a projection surface. In a certain way it is as if I rotate my own mirror image, and it turns back to me as a multifaceted image. At times these private moments of emotion and happiness have almost overtaken the function of my communication with the outside world. I suddenly had the impression of accessing other people’s sensations and experiences. The cookies become a trigger of an image or area that shifts back to me. The field that has been opened should define the largest possible spectrum of realities. I asked myself whether it is possible to seek out a general consciousness and to therefore create a kind of “shifting memory”. Can I transfer the experiential world of a large number of people onto one or several people?
“The cookies are so gross that I can’t eat them. But my aunt really helped herself (war generation). And they smell good.”
Chewing parties are ritualized orchestrations in which edible sculptures are produced and consumed. Attendees take a piece of dough, form it in or with the mouth and lay the formed object on parchment paper. The paper is signed in order to later identify the cookie. After baking, the cookies are offered to eat and then distributed. Over the course of the chew party, the participants decide whose cookie they will eat — for example that of their partner, a family member, a neighbor, a stranger — and therefore define their personal boundaries. The sculptural process is expanded through the work of interaction. An imaginary exchange of the bodily fluid saliva occurs. The colorful parchment with the impressions and the signatures are archived and are used for installations.
“Nonsense and primitive, pervers is nothing against that.”
In the middle ages, saliva was ascribed a magical effect: “The saliva belongs to the human secretions with which all kinds of magic is done. Some people’s saliva has an especially magical effect. If a strange women spits in child’s meal, it is cursed (Switzerland). If a girl spits in the face of an untrue lover, she makes him repulsive to all girls (Bohemia) (…) In Swabia, it is a rule of thumb to avoid saliva as if it were poisonous. In the Böhmerwald, saliva is considered the strongest poison. Also in Swabia, the saliva of enraged, wrathful people or an angry dog, but especially the saliva of a person that one has tickled to death. (…) The power of saliva seems especially odd in the narrations of Edda, after the Asen and Vanen spat their saliva into a vessel during their peace pact and from this saliva, the wise Kvâsir was created by the gods. Here, the idea could be that the saliva is equivalent to semen.“ (4)
“Every one is the same. Basically. So all mouths are the same. I thought of my brother’s mouth. Your mouth, Jan’s mouth, my mouth. It doesn’t matter. The same. And so, what comes from the mouth and what it put in them is familiar.”
I ask prominent personalities to form small, edible objects of dough with their mouths. Promicookies (Celebcookies): People like Pedro Almodovar, Ingo Appelt , Pierre Brice, Bazon Brock, Coolio, Alice Cooper, Doris Dörrie, Hannelore Elsner, Jan Hout, Thomas Hermanns, Helmuth Karasek, Kasper König, Nicole, Anna Nicole-Smith, Sunnyi Melles, Desiree Nosbusch, Sissy Perlinger, Ulf Poschardt, Jürgen Prochnow, Ilja Richter, Nina Ruge, Marianne Sägebrecht, Michael Schanze, Alfons Schuhbeck, Elisabeth Schweeger, Elke Sommer and others have taken part so far. The cookie formed by the celebrity simultaneously becomes a metaphor for language and a contemporary relic. The fan or art lover decides whether the object contains a distant cult status or whether the enjoyment of the artwork contains his assimilation as destruction at the same time.
“I felt your influence when I ate your cookie. I experienced a strong erotic feeling; I had a hard-on! Great feeling, crazy!”
The aspect of seduction plays a role with the cookies, at times also the impression of breaking a taboo. I consciously challenge the examination of the observer’s experience. It’s about awakening the remembrance of forgotten sensations. Here, Christian Boltanski’s statement “Art consists of the feeling of the viewer”(5) gains validity. The object is digested in the body of another. The moment of assimilation has, for me, a reference to the relationship between Baroque and Rococo. The strict, formal elements of the early Baroque, Rococo dissolves into rays of light and emotional roccaille ornamentation In India there is a fairy tale in which a goddess divides herself out of love of life. Her hair becomes forests, her arteries and tears become rivers and oceans.
“I’ll take a cookie. I find it disgusting! I’ll only eat it when I’m dying of thirst. Will I now have something of you in me until the end of my days? How lovely! For both of us! When I die. Of hunger – the cookie won’t be able to save me. But: it’s definitely a magic cookie that allows the transfer. Many thanks. Jörn.”
Notes:
(1) Comment from the cookiebox. An archive of the comments is on the Internet at www.andorrer.de
(2) Julia Kristeva, “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection”, New York, Columbia University Press 1982, p.118
(3) Maggie Kilgour, “From Communion to Cannibalism, An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation”, Princeton University Press 1990, Princeton New Jersey, p.13
(4) “Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens”. Ed. Eduard v. Hoffmann-Krayer and Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli, Berlin 1927-1942, volume 8 , p.150 - 153
(5) Interview by Doris von Drathen with Christian Boltanski, “Christian Boltanski: Inventar” Exh. Cat. Hamburger Kunsthalle 1991, Ed. Uwe M. Schneede, p. 64
from: "Sammeln (Reihe: Museum zum Quadrat 18), 151 p. ,
EUR 15,-, Verlag Turia + Kant, Hg: Karl Stocker / Wolfgang Muchitsch, Joanneum Graz / Austria, 2006
ISBN 3-85132-467-6
>>text main
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|