Hand to Mouth is a participatory performance event conceived and directed by Boo Chapple and Adele Varcoe with the assistance of their amazing team of helpers, chefs, performers, eaters and production crew.

The Event

The first event took place on the 29th of June, 2008 at the Meat Market, Melbourne. It involved a live jazz band, a production line of 40 people in uniform and an elevated table of 8 celebrity guests. The production line worked to prepare strange and exotic meals packaged in gloves, or cast in the shape of hands that were served up to the guests by three very fancy waitresses and a megaphone wielding Maitre D. Positioned between the production line and the dinner guests was a large pile of waste saved from the three weeks of pre-production, that grew in size with the discards from each meal. The whole undertaking was stage managed and documented by a crew of people in black.

The Concept

In affluent societies we constantly consume products that have been touched by many anonymous hands along the way. In the context of the global economy, it becomes increasingly apparent that we are also consuming other people’s lives in this process. The meal prototypes and the production line structure are designed to highlight both this ‘economic cannibalism’ and the long process of material transformation involved in the production of every day commodities. The strange and exotic meals are rarefied products to serve the constant need for novelty that drives consumption in our society. The conscious inclusion of the camera crew and stage management into the structure of Hand to Mouth is designed to highlight the production and management of experience as just another commodity in ‘reality culture’. The inclusive, participatory nature of the event does not allow for an outside perspective. We are all watching and being watched. Not only is the food itself produced on the production line, but both sets of participants – the production line and the ‘celebrity’ guests –  make the spectacle for each other. All become performers in the situation. Our role as artists is to direct the parameters within which this performance takes place. As such, the bizarre nature of the meals, the ever growing pile of waste and the excessive scale of the production, have been designed to construct a situation in which both food and the very act of consumption are ‘made strange’. By actively engaging in this context, participants are able to consider how such every day things, once deconstructed, may be put back together again differently. In this respect, the work investigates the potential for collective creative production to operate as a form of social and political engagement.

The Future

Boo and Adele are currently working to produce further manifestations of Hand to Mouth, both in Australia and internationally. They are also hosting smaller events and workshops around the Hand to Mouth food prototypes and exhibitions of the video and artifacts from the first event.