Josée
Aubin
Ouellette
Performance
The Shape of the Cutlet
Imposter Syndrome
Extreme Unction
Phantom Limb
Exhibitions
Bone Meal (2018)
Body Blocks (2016)
There is no There (2015)
Sick Room (2015)
Stage Hand Tropisms (2013)
MILK (2014)
Sérieux Solides (2014)
The Circulation of Fluids: and other exchanges (2012)
Painting
Oral Fixation (ongoing)
Flower in Danger (2022)
Object Theatre Paintings (2011)
Writing
How to Soften Slime
Five Stories for MILK
The Desperate Diner
D
Sound Directions
Art Teacher
Teaching Portfolio
Tablecloths
Info
CV
THE SHAPE OF THE CUTLET
For Shaping a Sustainable Future: Transformative Technology at UCL, 23 April 2023
For 'Shaping a sustainable future: transformative technology at UCL, visual artist, Josée Aubin Ouellette reimagines her work, The Shape of the Cutlet, as a canapé style presentation.
The Shape of the Cutlet was originally an artist book and performance work made with 30 kilograms of unformed Quorn, or mycoprotein, collected from the company's factory in Middlesborough. The dough-like material was used as a performance material for a communal reading. Portioning out the and bringing back together the mass, while feeding the text line by line to the audience, the formal and performative qualities of the material took on multiple forms as an affective and literal alternative to flesh.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/case-studies/2023/jul/shaping-sustainable-future-transformative-technology-ucl
The Shape of the Cutlet
OUTPOST, Norwich, 23 Nov 2017
www.norwichoutpost.org/programme/jose-aubin-ouellette
The Shape of the Cutlet is a work performed with 30 kilograms of unformed Quorn mycoprotein. Sourced directly from the Quorn factory in Middlesbrough, it functions as a medium for a communal reading. Feeding the text line by line to the group, portionning out then bringing the dough back together, the formal and performative qualities of the material took on multiple forms as a narrative and literal alternative to flesh.
The Shape of the Cutlet
by Josée Aubin Ouellette
Your eyes read the shape of the cutlet.
A natural form, making itself.
Geometry tells you it was sculpted.
A homogeneous substance pressed into a mold.
It didn’t make itself to move.
The dignity of a whole roasted versus material in a bowl, unformed.
Suspended in liquid.
Not its own juices.
The shape represents reproduction.
Self-conscious cubes.
Made of many fibres forced together.
Fleshed out to be a displaced organ.
Of individual anthropomorphized paste.
It’s erotic to think that it’s trying.
The even skin tone of its faces.
Kissing, like eating without chewing, means love.
What shape was the dough when it was born?
When it was part of a whole.
Never an autonomous form.
It didn’t have organs and it never was one.
The shape on the plate stands alone.
Tissue would form a seal.
Would sit in its own fluids.
Hold itself no matter how it was handled.
To make a skin, it wears pantyhose.
The slice on the plate was cut from a cylindrical form.
The cross section is marbled.
The edges are darker, defining exterior.
The colour of body without being one.
The texture is smooth, no grain, no sinew.
Smoother than liver, processed, transformed.
We want to consume a whole.
Something with substance, a thing with integrity of its own.
Equal to the sensuous feeling of the mouth and lips on skin.
Squeezing the thing, juices run out.
Surprising like milk from a sponge.
The only way to drink it is to suck it out.
We don’t remove the breast to drink the milk.
It wouldn’t keep giving, if it ever lived.
The egg comes out not knowing.
Meat without sinew.
No memories in its muscle.
If we redefine flesh, if we redefine milk.
The food on the plate is pleasing.
Referring to a system that produces itself.
A communal body of infinite reproduction.
The seasoning on your tongue sings, ringing like a note in tune.
The tongue knows when the tongue it eats tastes good.
The hand knows if the knife slices itself.
The teeth know who when the teeth hit bone.
At first the hand doesn’t know when the hand it’s grasped
is not the hand it thought it held.