Reflection on Digestion: The Stomach 2014

Saturday 25 October 2014.

90 minutes.

Part of ‘Building Interdisciplinary Bridges across Cultures’, Faculty of Education, Cambridge University, 24-26 October 2014.

Photography: Pam Burnard and BIBAC Team.

Materials: Campari spritz: Campari Bitters, Prosecco and soda water, with a slice of orange, and honeycombe ox tripe cooked in a rich velvety aromatic tomato sauce.

In Reflection on Digestion: The Stomach we reflect on the process and idea of digestion through eating, drinking, and language.

Whilst consuming an aperitif and a dish of tripe, participants are guided by a text collaged from a variety of historical and contemporary sources exploring how we cognitively and bodily digest food, knowledge, and experience, and fashion our sense of self.

Firstly, participants are asked to practice mindfulness eating. In silence, they will listen and reflect on their own direct experience of eating, and the ideas and sensations that ensue. For example, participants will concentrate on gastric juices as they are triggered by an aperitif, and contemplate what happens in mind and body when tripe they eat, the stomach of another. Later, participants will share their experiences, writing and discussing their reflections.

The piece embodies an experiential approach to knowledge creation by placing the participant, their senses, and body at the centre of the exploration of our ‘visceral knowledge’, as David Hillman describes, 'knowledge experienced in as well as knowledge of the interior of the body’. Participants literally and metaphorically ruminate on the processes of ingestion, digestion, subjectivity, and on embodied ways of knowing.