Marta Navaridas: Stomach - or how can we be with each other?

“Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama. For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.” - Audre Lorde

Marta Navaridas’ latest work examines the hierarchy of the senses in Western culture. Seeing and hearing are regarded as ‘higher’ senses – they are associated with superiority and the respective dominant social groups. The senses of smell, taste and touch, however, are believed to be animalistic features, drawing us ever closer to the animal kingdom, and are mostly evoked in connection with women, workers and racialized bodies.

Navaridas’ three performers, which seem to be stranded on a utopian island, oppose this order through forms of encounter, joy, lust and interaction which blur the lines between inner and exterior body features, celebrate odours and collectively and radically reject a hierarchy of our senses as well as the questionable nature-culture divide through sound and vocal escapades. A joyful tribute to the ‘inferior’ senses.