fasting girls
«The real trick is to disappear.»
Chris Kraus, Aliens & Anorexia
To Eat or to Look. Can Images Nourish Us?
A possible cartography of voluntary fasting as one of the symptoms of the contemporary drive toward disappearance into the image, from the Victorian Fasting Girls—the so-called “hunger artists”—to today’s fasting TikTok creators.
The project reflects on the relationship between hunger and images as a form of nourishment, however symbolic, in order to rethink voluntary fasting not so much as the clinical diagnosis of an individual illness, but as a collective symptom. It explores the ability of digital images to nourish hybrid pixel-flesh bodies—bodies saturated with images yet emptied of food. Ultimately, the project seeks to contribute to the demedicalization of what we call anorexia (non-desire in greek) in these bodies in metamorphosis, approaching it instead as a collective response to an excess of gravity, an excess of presence: a shared process of mutation.
Formally, Fasting Girls takes the shape of an audiovisual performance combining live actions, projections, and a live-generated sound environment; a menu created in real time that nourishes us with images-as-nothingness; and a spoken cinema narrative that runs throughout the entire performance.
Premiere: TNT Festival, October 2025
Rèplika Teatro, Madrid, March 2026
AT AT AT Festival, Pamplona, April 2026
Fundació Brossa, Barcelona, May 2026
team
Performers: Marta Azparren (text and visuals), Haize Lizarazu (live sound environment), Eiden Peloche (actions), Carles Tarrasó (gastronomy)
Original concept: Marta Azparren and Sandra Cendal
Special collaboration in the research and public programme: Mayte Gómez Molina, Teo Pardo, Tania Arias Winogradow, Claudia Faci, Montserrat Gutiérrez, the Ments Despertes programme, and other invited collaborators.
Testimonies: Mariona Muñoz Blade and Eiden Peloche (Ments Despertes programme), Mariu del Amo, Tania Arias, Sandra Cendal, María Limón, Mayte Gómez Molina, and Teo Pardo.
The Thin People video: Taller Estampa
Ballet de Catalunya dancers: Nijiha Nishimura, Gabriela Ewa Majtyka, Clara Sánchez Díaz, Marie Villarubias
Caliper insect design: Sergio Arribas
Live sound environment: Haize Lizarazu
Lighting: David Picazo
Sound and technical coordination: Anxe Faraldo
Movement coaching and choreography: Manu Badás
Production and distribution: Micaela Ferrer
Director: Marta Azparren
Co-produced by: Fundació Joan Brossa, TNT, Barcelona Crea Grants, and La Caldera.
With the support of: Fundació Via Activa (Grup SOM VIA), the Ments Despertes programme, Hospital del Perpetuo Socorro (Albacete), espai nyam nyam, La Membrana, Ballet de Catalunya (Terrassa), the University of Castilla–La Mancha, and Mary Read Bookshop.