The Gift of Cake

Abstract

In this article I introduce a series of durational, participatory baking performances that I made between 2011-2013. Through a process of exchange, the audience were invited to share a memory about a special person, place, time or cake; in return, I baked their memories into unique cakes dedicated to those memories. With reference to these works I consider the potential for cakes in performance to develop articulations of generosity between participants, and map new avenues of exchange and commensality. Drawing on Edward Casey’s work on remembrance, I reflect on the strategies of commemorative exchange used throughout the performances. I problematize the commonplace function of the cake as a symbolic gift from the woman/mother figure, and discuss how the experience of baking together in these performances produced a web of spontaneous, multi-directional exchange between unknown givers and receivers. I argue that this process of exchange unsettled the cultural function of cakes as gendered, asymmetrical gifts, becoming instead the work of the collective that celebrated multifarious human experiences. Finally, I reflect on what was left when the cakes were eaten and the artworks destroyed, proposing that the act of sharing cake produced a feeling of generosity that became the essence of a community that lived on beyond the live events.