By Julie Hindkjær, volunteer journalist
"Sometimes you can bake a giant cake and have a completely ridiculous time. I think more people need to be a bit less serious in their everyday lives."
The words come from Danish performance artist Alberte Skronski, who at 14:30 on Thursday at Food Is Now, invites you to join in a collective cake-eating event, culminating in a performance created especially for Roskilde Festival.
For this performance, Alberte Skronski expects to satisfy many mouths (and eyes and ears), and therefore she has brought a cake weighing no less than 100 kilos, which you are first invited to sink your teeth into.
Once you’ve had your fill, Alberte Skronski will dress up as a gardener and slowly reveal her flower lingerie, before fully embracing the festival spirit and getting thoroughly dirty. And sit on the cake.
This is called cake-sitting. Cake-sitting originates from the kink community, where people derive pleasure from interacting with food and other materials in a messy and sticky way. Roskilde Festival is the perfect stage for this, according to Alberte Skronski.
"People at Roskilde are used to stepping out of their normal daily routines and are more relaxed and open to fun and quirky things happening. That's why I feel it's a safe space to perform such a super weird and half-naked performance," says Alberte Skronski.
It may sound a bit silly. And that's exactly by design.
"As the gardener, I become part of the garden and roll around. There's just something funny about being all clean and nice in your pretty underwear, and then smearing yourself with cake," says Alberte Skronski.
In her own words, Alberte Skronski draws inspiration from the colourful and playful worlds known from children's TV, which she adds an adult twist to with humour and creativity.
"Hopefully, people will laugh and forget their everyday worries a bit. That's really what I want to do with everything I create – to create a respite where you can step into a nostalgic, childlike world and forget all your adult concerns," says Alberte Skronski.
Hvem er Alberte Skronski?
Alberte Skronski is a Danish artist, educated at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, 2022. Her artistic practice includes video, installation, and sculpture, primarily working with cardboard and papier-mâché. She developed her skills in sculpture and painting in Florence, Italy, but since 2018 has focused on performance and video art.
"Let Them Eat Dirt" will be Alberte Skronski's first performance with an interactive element, where the audience becomes part of the artwork by eating it. The music for the performance is produced by Jeppe Dalsgaard Andersen, one of Alberte Skronski's oldest collaborators.
The cake contains gluten, cream, and eggs.
The cake itself is vegan, but there is meringue and whipped cream on top.