Performing Leftovers

Abstract

This article takes as its case Raul Ortega Ayala's The Last Supper, a theatrically staged “re-enactment” of the iconic Passover seder. In each iteration, Ortega Ayala cooks and serves a menu, derived from historical culinary research, to 12 volunteers in an art gallery setting. The meal is professionally documented, and witnessed by an audience. Following the performance, an edited video of the happening is played in a loop alongside the material remains of the meal, including the leftover food. Over time, the leftovers rot and the smell of the mould and fungi dominate the gallery.A “hybrid” analytic framework for performative art practices that also exist in material forms focuses on the force of the interaction between artist and material rather than privileging either the object, document or the body of the artist. This frame considers the life of the art work over the cycle of production and consumption, and argues for the limits of material agency in the face of our deep investment in human consciousness — we “make” and “choose” in ways that things cannot. But in omitting the “post-consumption” of the event, processes of preservation, recycling, disposal and rot disappear from view.Reading critical food studies of the post-consumption and waste cycles through Ortega Ayala's The Last Supper, I argue that performance relies on the perceptual magic of disappearance to purify our acts, relieving us of ethical considerations of human and artistic agency. I suggest that creating “leftovers” is part of a thoughtful performance cycle, an ecology that requires preservation and care for continued life.