Having a fraught relationship to food, I initiated a series that playfully confronted myself, and the viewer (-turned participant), in a ritual of vicarious eating – revolving around the feeding of cake. In this sticky negotiation, the mundane is foregrounded and transformed through an awkward, yet earnest, nurturing act.
[Feature photo: Ellen Friis]
Photo: Ellen Friis
What Goes Around Comes Around (April 2018)
Brandts Museum, Live Art for Kids Festival – liveart.dk, Odense, Denmark
In a revival of my cake-feeding performance at the invitation of liveart.dk, I asked the young ones how they feel about food (and eating). Our conversation gave them the floor — but happened while they spoon-fed their parents, grandparents or a total (adult) stranger decadent mouthfuls of marzipan enveloped vanilla-raspberry cake.
Photo: VS
Eat How You Feel (Nov 2008)
Poetry Gabriola Festival, Gabriola Island, BC.
Donning my “cutlery dress,” a chiming sound-costume-sculpture, for this iteration, I served cupcakes. Each one had a little message that I penned, pinned to it with a toothpick. After the chaos of everyone feeding each other, the audience-participants went around reading their messages like the found poetry of a corps exquis.
Photo: Sylvette Babin
Mange tes sentiments
(Sept 2008)
Infr’Action Festival, Sète, France
Setting up an early-morning kiosk in the middle of a farmers’ market on two consecutive days, a lovely fruit-topped sponge cake was fed (one person at a time, by me) to curious and willing passersby of all ages.
Photo: Christian Richer
Mange tes sentiments / Eat How You Feel
(July 2008)
Festival international Montréal en art, Montreal, QC. (without the dress).
This time around, the 16″ x 20″ chocolate cake was cut into 2 x 2 pieces, each one displaying a message (much like the version at Poetry Gabriola). Because audience-participants could deliberately pick their message, the invitation was to contemplate the sentiment of these words while I gingerly placed cake morsels into their mouths.
Photo: Kathryn Presner
Eat How You Feel
(Aug 2006)
Overload Poetry Festival, Melbourne, Australia.
Setting up shop in a beloved neighbourhood vegetarian restaurant, participants’ deliberations became a focal point of the performance. Why cake? Why feed me? What does it mean to “eat how you feel?” Conversations capped off with the actual feeding but were evidently impacted by the particularized individual exchanges.
Photo: Christian Richer
Let Them Eat My Graduation Certificate
(Sept 2005)
Concordia University 3rd Annual Juried Fine Arts Alumni Exhibition, Montreal, QC.
Let Them Eat My Graduation Certificate featured a cake-facsimile of my BFA diploma. Having not attended convocation, this ceremony offered pieces of my degree (as an achievement), my diploma (as an object) and my experience (as the outcome of my time at school). Wearing my “cutlery dress,” participants chose their fork or spoon. 
Photo: Matthew Hodgins
Let Them Eat Cake
(Jan 2004)
Studio XXArt’s Birthday, Montreal, QC.
Again in the “cutlery dress” we collectively celebrated Art’s Birthday with a selection of cakes I had made for the event. Feeding audience-participants out of their own cupped hands, cake was precariously served and carefully fed from one of the many spoons and forks affixed to my garb.
Photo: courtesy of Grunt Gallery Archives
(If) not for me, (if) not for you
(Nov 2001)
Grunt Gallery, Live: The Vancouver Performance Art Biennale, Vancouver, BC.
The inaugural cake performance! I wore the “cutlery dress” for the first time but instead of feeding the audience-participants I served pieces of cake garnished with a freshly cut lock of hair from my head (or the person’s head who I offered cake to; they could choose). Will they eat their cake under these conditions? Some actually did!
Photo: Christian Richer
Ikh Gib Dir Eppes Tzu Essen – I Give You Something To Eat
(Feb 2004)
Rethinking the Body, Self and Subject in Performance Conference, Columbia University, New York City, NY.
And Evidence II(June 2002) InterAzioni Festival, Sardinia, Italy, along with Evidence (March 2002) Festival Voix d’Amériques, Montreal, QC., were yet other early iterations of this work while wearing the “cutlery dress” that were either not documented or were but documentation has since (sadly) been lost. 
Victoria Stanton 