Céline Mathieu
Mouthful
Book (E256)

210×142.5 mm; 56pp

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Edition of 120 copies

In 2020, CMMC – Céline Mathieu and Myrthe van der Mark – were invited by organisers NICC Lodgers to perform

at M HKA in Antwerp in response to 

art subsidy cuts in Flanders. Their contribution, The Writing Performance, was an attempt to write a novella each 

in three days, during the museum’s
opening hours and in full sight of visitors. Throughout The Writing Performance, CMMC subsisted on water and sugar.

 

celinemathieu.be

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From Mouthful

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Today we ate asparagus soup. From her seat she asked me to find the jar on the top right shelf and with the scissors from the opposite side’s drawer, she assigned me to cut the soft conserved asparagi

to pieces before heating them in the pre-made soup in the microwave. The cream of the soup and the thready soft structure of the bits, let themselves be squeezed by the tongue. I wondered if she did that too. 

 

The skin on her legs is like a caramelised version of such an asparagus, it felt like a thumb’s pressing caress could reveal the soft but little flesh under it. Bruised and stained, the skin is nevertheless tight on her shins, oddly conserved. Why would skin be so limited there, that it forever remains smooth? Do we wrinkle because it’s the underlying mass that diminishes? Am I retarded for only getting that now,

or is it false? Are we forever the same outside with a gaining or shrinking inside? Is the skin’s stretchability limited to the places where muscles’ growth is anticipated? Thinking of it, it seems there is an odd lubricant, a thin gliding layer of stuff, that separates the inside from the skin. The pack and the package. 

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