Crack(er)s, or a performance about meals and mistakes

Lara Groeneweg & Roelie de Jaeger

• Performance
• Installatie
• Expo
• Film

"Crack(er)s, or a performance about meals and mistakes" is a performance that questions the depiction of women in art, popular culture and the media as well as the commodification of the female body. In this performance artists Roelie de Jaeger and Lara Groeneweg combine their artistic researches in a performance that celebrates the female body in motion. This will culminate in an interdisciplinary performance with dance, photography, film, text and music.

Lara has always been fascinated by the concept “female hunger.” Female hunger is a broad concept, but the focus of her research is on the way that “eating women” are depicted in popular culture. Until this day there are still very few films or tv series in the mainstream where women eat in a “normal” way (between quotation marks, because what is “normal” anyway?). In most instances where eating women are depicted, they are shown with great control. Or emotional and completely “out of control”. Besides food, “female hunger” is also about sexuality. Eating women are often sexualized. Or women that are open about their sexuality are considered hungry. Besides films and series also the media makes clear connections between food and sexuality, such as in commercials. Within the concept of female hunger, food and sexuality go hand in hand.

Roelie researches the depiction of the female body in general and that of the vulva. She is curious as to in which way we look at the female body and up to which lengths women can or even have to adapt to a standard that is constantly changing. The emphasis of her work is on “body positivity”. Roelie’s fascination with the way we depict the vulva encouraged her to collect photographs of what she calls “cracks”: images of tears and lines in daily life and nature that suggest stylized vulva’s. She also researched the folds and lines in her own body that come naturally into existence in a female body in motion. During her movement research she took close-ups of these lines and folds. These images became references to the taboo concerning the vulva as well as the taboo concerning imperfections in the female body. It became a celebration of tiny “mistakes and errors” in objects as well as human beings.