Alice Pelot
I watched while she ate her cob of corn. The corn teased and tormented her. Its kernels yellow like buttercups whispered sweet, juicy nothings. It demanded to be in her mouth. It wanted to sooth her sweaty, tingling taste buds. To be mashed between her molars and stuck between her two front teeth lodged where only floss could reach. She could resist no longer and dug in to the fleshy vegetation tearing off no less than twenty kernels. She closed her eyes to heighten her pallet and also to have a private moment of satisfaction. As she swallowed, her eyes turned up and found mine. A smile crossed her face – an acknowledgment that I had seen her pleasure and she didn’t mind. She sat alone and welcomed my presence, as I too was another lone diner. As she continued to smile at me, her eyes lost their twinkle and her face strained like it does while smiling falsely for a camera. Her chin forced upward with emotion formed an awkward smile. The corners turned down. She stared through me, her face returning to a blank slate of denial. A face betrayed by broken promises and high expectation. Gaze downcast now, she drifted further into the void of middle distance full of endless self-questioning. I looked away. Was I the only one aware of her distress? She might be embarrassed that I had continued to stare, but when I looked back she had woken from her daydream, and realized that her prosthetic robotic hands (the cause of my initial double take) were still clutching to some corn, full of tasty promise. Then, a smile lit her eyes creasing their corners. Unmistakably love entered her life, she glowed with adoration. Rolling the bumpy cob around in her metal appendages, she admired it until once again the corn proved too tempting. It’s promise this time not of flavor, but of relief and escape. Again she closed her eyes, again she looked up to find my intrusive, voyeuristic gape and once again she smiled, acknowledging my participation. This time I could not hold her gracious gaze. I looked down to my own food only to find it bland and unappealing. When I ventured to return her gaze again and lighten the mood by asking what she ordered, she had already descended into her hurtful dream. Instead of anger, this time I witnessed desperate loneliness. For the next ten minutes any onlooker would have experienced her cycles of euphoria ending once in what I perceived to be embarrassment, once in self-loathing and once in resentment. With such range of emotion I feared she might turn it onto me, but I could not resist offering a gesture of support more active than a smile. How? In this Sisyphean loop, what was the turning point? Was the corn causing her harm or triggering disappointment? Was she eating to sooth pain of loss only to find anger in her indulgence? Or was she traumatized, judged or ostracized for her disability? What was it like to be a cyborg? As the questions faded I found myself staring directly at another lone diner. I smiled politely, acknowledging that I had drifted into a deep thought. Searching for the corn woman, I felt abandoned and vulnerable. There remained only a well-nibbled cob left on her plate. Angry with myself for not saying hello after the feelings she let me share, and with no entertainment to distract me, I took another look at my meal and heard it whisper sweet, juicy nothings.
I <3 Corn is a creative story based on Jesper Just's video installation Servitudes at the Palais de Tokyo 24 June - 13 September 2015. This particular video presents a loop of a woman with braces on her arms and fingers emotionally eating a cob of corn. This story is a simultaneous experience of the work and the emotional vulnerability offered through the subject.