The Omnivore’s Paradox:
Critical Mouthfeel of Institutions
Performed at SKOGEN 2025Duration: 3 hours
Performance, Installation, Costume & Sound: Andreas Engman
/ Light Design: Fabian Roos & Johan Almström / Photography: Hendrik Zeitler
The Omnivore’s Paradox: Critical Mouthfeel of Institutions, is a performative and metaphorical exploration of the paradoxical nature of eating. The work is presented as a three-hour ongoing performance installation where the audience can come and go as they please throughout the evening.
”The omnivore is inclined towards diversification, innovation, exploration and change, which can be vital to its survival; but on the other hand it has to be careful, mistrustful, ”conservative” in its eating: any new, unknown food is a potential danger. The omnivore’s paradox lies in the tension, the oscillation between the two poles of neophobia (prudence, fear of the unknown, resistance to change) and neophilia (the tendency to explore, the need for change, novelty, variety). Every omnivore, and man in particular, is subject to a kind of Batesonian double bind between the familiar and the unknown, monotony and change, security and variety. There is perhaps a fundamental anxiety in man’s relationship to foods, resulting not only from the need to distrust new or unknown foods, but also and more importantly from the tension between the two contradictory and equally constraining imperatives of the omnivore’s paradox.”
Claude Fischler. ”Food, Self and Identity”. Social Science Information/sur les sciences sociales. (27. 275-292. 1988)
If we examine what it truly means to eat something, it is a profoundly radical act! We take an external object from the world and make it a part of ourselves. This act risks our entire existence. Items whose taste and mouthfeel can bring pleasure and well-being can also pose a threat to our lives, depending on what they are made of. These fundamental ideas about eating are presented in The Omnivore’s Paradox, in speculative relation to concepts such as liminal spaces, the Eucharist rite, the institution as a body, and anxiety-inducing threshold states. All of these concepts are interconnected in one way or another through the many paradoxical practices of eating.
You can listen to the sound work HERE!
