I’ve always hated sculling, and synchro. Katie Greenall is an endlessly charismatic performer who has the audience eating out of her hands instantly in Blubber, a light and playful piece that nevertheless points to some real darkness in existing as a fat woman today; taking a small step towards creating that space to exist now, and going forward. As a fat woman, who finds it hard even now to call myself fat, Greenall ‘s experience really touched me in my soul.
The final participatory collaboration was a glorious moment of shared ritual
Greenall has been making work about her body for years now, and this is the last, “because it’s too hard”. She is tired of her body being a site of discord and discourse, of not being hers. I don’t want to give the wrong impression that the show is fun and earnest and Greenall is an entertaining, self-deprecating performer, resulting in a very enjoyable time. She describes herself being severed from her body and attempts to create a mythology of her own to be able to create a place for both of them to exist, and perhaps reunite. This separation between body and self is something I’ve had to come to terms with in my own life, and the art I have been making. I used to conceptualise myself as a brain in a jar.
We go on a journey of attempted self discovery, starting by being happiest in the water and a tale of happy fat favourite animals, whales and walruses playing and using that as an entry point back into the body. It feels like Greenall lived my exact life, I was called a water baby and my chosen animal was the seal. Blubber has moments of absolute truth, but the separate parts feel disparate, all the elements don’t quite hang together, into a coherent whole.
The rest of the creative team have done a wonderful job, every element of the show has been carefully crafted for precise impact. I partially loved the gleaming, radiant mythic pool hall.
The bits that really reach me is the darkness in the deep end of the pool. Greenall set out to make a show about synchronised swimming, and that she’d come to terms with her body. In the end reality is more complex than those original aims. It's rare to see an artist set up to do something and fail, and be so truthful and earnest about that failure. Greenall explores the real difficulty that comes from forming a liberatory community within fat people. The hard truth is many fat people do not want to stay the size they are, and are actively trying to make themselves not fat. Fat people who are not trying to lose weight, or are happy at the weight they are, are few and far between. So it can be difficult opening up and being vulnerable to fellow fat people, because you are not always in the same fight. It’s as if the LGBTQ+ community was suddenly full of self hating people in straight marriages looking for down low sex on Grindr.
I do very much agree with Greenall explaining how she fell into the sucking abyss of feeling unlovable and undeserving of any love or care because of one's fatness. This is an abyss Greenall is still in. For me, shaking off that black thought spiral was a lesson that came with time; it certainly didn’t happen in my early twenties. If you can’t believe yourself to be loveable yet, then look through the eyes of those who already love you. Which seems to be a strength Greenall is drawing from already , as we hear the recorded voices that form the finale of the piece of those who love Kaite talking about her body.
The final participatory collaboration was a glorious moment of shared ritual, and of building a community where there is no clear one now. Not my first swimming pool baptism, and hopefully won’t be my last either. For me, it was a real moment of seeing your life reflected in another, the communion of shared suffering with a stranger.
