HAND TO MOUTH

BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL, 2014

With Literary Cutlery by Ania Bas
 

Hand to Mouth – a 1:1 performance intervention was first presented at Memory Banquet: food and acts of remembering is part of Being Human: a festival of the Humanities, November 2014. 

Through a participatory investigation into actions, rhythms, and narratives of feeding and being fed, Hand to Mouth is about coming close(r). In your body lives the memory of being fed. Before you learnt to use hands, fork, spoon, chopstick or knife, someone fed you. In this intimate 1:1 performance, dance artist, Amaara Raheem returns to this very basic of human rituals. Set in a warm, domestic setting an audience member creates their own ‘plate’ choosing foods from a buffet style menu, inspired by Sri Lankan foods.  Following a hand-washing ritual, Amaara will feed you – not only the food itself, but words too. Stories of the spice trade intermingle sustenance with narratives in the space between your mouth and ear, to create old and new remembrance - food as shelter, food as culture, food as threshold.