# 45 When Desire Goes Through the Stomach with Clara from We Feast

00:00:05: Forty people all naked, covered in like spaghetti or something.

00:00:09: Food and sex, they trigger also the same pleasure around the brain.

00:00:13: More than twenty people naked on the floor.

00:00:16: Beautiful art piece made of food on their bodies and then everyone is eating

00:00:20: on the body.

00:00:32: Hi and welcome to a new episode of Sex in Berlin and today I'm so happy to have someone here who is able to do something what I can't do.

00:00:43: because I can't cook.

00:00:45: Every time I think about cooking it is a little bit depressing and it is nothing sensual or sexy and nothing nice.

00:00:54: So today I invited a lovely person from France, Clara, she's sitting beside me.

00:01:00: She's coming from a country where I think a lot of people can cook pretty well and she came to Berlin to bring us something that connects sex and food.

00:01:12: So I'm pretty interested in this topic.

00:01:15: I'm very happy to have you here, Clara.

00:01:17: Welcome.

00:01:18: And Clara is doing We Feast, which looks and sounds a little bit like the perfect food orgy.

00:01:25: When you see the pictures, they are full of fruits and very nice sculptures of different kind of sweets or also salty things.

00:01:33: And she did a sausage edition.

00:01:36: I want to hear more about that.

00:01:38: It looks like art.

00:01:40: and it looks very sensual and very tasty.

00:01:43: Clara, where does your story begin?

00:01:46: First

00:01:46: of all, thank you so much for having me today.

00:01:49: So yeah, I come from a country where gastronomy is a very important part of the culture.

00:01:54: I think it's one of the countries where we spend the most time around the table.

00:01:58: Like Sunday afternoon, we can have like six hours of family gatherings around food.

00:02:04: So food has been part of my culture very much.

00:02:08: And the way I grew up, food was also a part of a love language.

00:02:15: For example my grandmother she would not be able to say I love you but she would for example wake up at five in the morning and like cook like cook food for six hours for us.

00:02:26: So yeah it has been in me for a very long time.

00:02:29: Where exactly did you grow up?

00:02:31: I grew up in the French Alps in the mountains.

00:02:35: Yeah.

00:02:35: What is the typical food from there?

00:02:37: Cheese.

00:02:40: Where did you live after it?

00:02:42: Like somewhere in France?

00:02:44: I lived in Switzerland, so cheese is also like a national treasure.

00:02:48: And then I moved, I live a little bit in India, where I really love the complexity of the flavors.

00:02:55: And it's something that can be like very strong and like very also ingrained in the culture.

00:03:00: I live a little bit in Paris.

00:03:02: And now I'm here in Berlin for the past almost four years, five years.

00:03:07: In Berlin, we have not a so special food culture, but we have a very special sex culture, a sex positive culture.

00:03:14: So when did it start that you connect these two things?

00:03:18: For a very long time, so I had like an emotional, like everyone like relationship to food and also like to sex because for me, both of them, it's like sex is like for me, never only sex and food is never only food.

00:03:32: So combining the two felt very obvious somehow, because I think in the human experience, we all share a same set of foundations, which is like sleep, oxygen, food, and sex.

00:03:46: This is something that everyone does on Earth.

00:03:49: And like food and sex, they trigger like also the same pleasure every in the brain.

00:03:54: And it's something that everyone can relate to different degrees.

00:03:58: And when I started the project almost five years ago with my ex business partner, Alina, we wanted to design like a sex-productive event and we were not like thinking about food like right away.

00:04:11: but when we started to think okay what people should eat at the event like we don't want to do like normal like carrot and hummus like boring things that everyone does.

00:04:21: and then we started to think about oh what if like we put food at the core of it and then it become like boom like a complete like obvious thing to do.

00:04:30: When I see your pictures from your event they are also very funny in a way and they combine food or like things you prepare food with with bodies and they have.

00:04:41: they have special colors so it's very arty also.

00:04:46: Is the combination also an art thing?

00:04:49: Yeah, absolutely.

00:04:50: So as you said, at the beginning, I'm like, you're don't really like to cook.

00:04:56: I am really bad cook.

00:04:57: Wonderful.

00:04:58: I'm so happy that you asked me

00:04:59: that.

00:05:00: But we collaborate with amazing and brilliant food artists.

00:05:05: So they are not only chefs, but they are also Food artist and the first two one that we collaborated with Ellen Russell Brown and Talita Perfect.

00:05:17: They were at the like the core of the conceptualization of the food and they come from our background and For us was really interesting to blur the line between art and food and like how this can be a medium to sensuality and like food is really displayed in a abstract surreal.

00:05:38: like They want to play with the texture.

00:05:41: and now we collaborate with other also brilliant food artists.

00:05:44: Clara, I haven't been at your events.

00:05:47: I'm very sad about it.

00:05:48: Take me with you.

00:05:49: How does it really happen?

00:05:51: So what do you really do when I come to a We Feast event?

00:05:55: How does it start?

00:05:56: So we have like different formats.

00:05:59: Like one is like a long two days of a weekend and the small one is only for one evening but the two of them share the same concept where at the very beginning we want people to connect with themselves before they can connect to others.

00:06:14: How do they do this?

00:06:15: So

00:06:15: we have like some guided experiences for our workshop around consent, we have meditation workshops, we have connection workshops, we have really something that's touched a more somatic approach of that.

00:06:29: So for for example the small formats like people arrive around between five and five thirty in the afternoon and this is a completely naked event.

00:06:39: people are wearing masks and the theme is sexual shame.

00:06:42: so we have like art performances around the theme and also uh so as I say like consent workshop and meditation workshop.

00:06:50: and then we have like

00:06:51: uh

00:06:52: first like food experience which is like half of the participant will lay down like so naked on like a tablecloth.

00:07:02: that would be like looking like a real table on the floor and they would be like naked laying there while the other half of it would like display food and their body like a piece of art.

00:07:12: and then we will literally observe like more than twenty people naked on the floor like with beautiful art piece made of food on their bodies and then everyone is eating on the body.

00:07:23: We have another food experience.

00:07:26: which is where we blindfold everyone, and then we feed them with bites that are linked to emotions.

00:07:34: So sometimes they are surprised because of the textures difference, or it's not something that they would expect in the mouth, or the flavors are, I don't know, for example, chili and chocolate, or it's like broccoli and chocolate, this kind of thing.

00:07:50: like this is really good.

00:07:51: like if like this is um yeah something that can be like very surprising.

00:07:56: uh so so yeah.

00:07:59: and we also have like artists who perform cake sitting.

00:08:02: so for example the idea of cake sitting is really to

00:08:05: take sitting cake

00:08:06: sitting.

00:08:07: yeah how does it feel to sit on a cake?

00:08:12: I didn't do it personally but we have an amazing performer Erika who does it.

00:08:18: and like this is a beautiful like three layers cake like beautifully decorated by the food artist and like there's a piece around like sexual shame and how like for example we don't like.

00:08:30: sometimes it's too beautiful we don't want to destroy it.

00:08:33: but like the fact of like breaking the rules of how we interact with food is the same with the event.

00:08:39: we have no plates no cutleries and for the cake for example so she sits in the cake and then we display cakes on the floor and people are invited with their hands to destroy the cake and eat them.

00:08:53: So in a very animalistic way.

00:08:57: How do you make the connection between the people?

00:09:00: Do they talk about the food or you talk, you have some ideas how you arrange it?

00:09:05: So how is the connection between the people?

00:09:07: We don't talk openly about food.

00:09:09: It's really made through the experiences.

00:09:13: But so as I say, like this, like the few experiences, but like we want them to more like connect on like emotional and human level.

00:09:22: And then the conversation sparks around that.

00:09:24: And like, for example, after most of the food experiences we ask people in the popcorn style what's the experience through that?

00:09:32: and for for what I heard and some people say that like this is they've never seen food like this.

00:09:39: or or they think oh my god is this allowed?

00:09:42: or like they are surprised by this texture or yeah like the experience itself sparks conversation around that.

00:09:50: what have you learned over the time with this work?

00:09:54: so what was new for you?

00:09:56: I really realized that like, like the intuition that we had at the beginning, that's like... We are all connected through food.

00:10:04: I came very like vivid at the event.

00:10:08: Like we know food is something that gather people when we go to dinner or when even in the business meeting we can go for lunch.

00:10:15: So food has been something socially very strong to connect people.

00:10:19: And I also like before like designing these events like I didn't know how far this could be.

00:10:26: And from what I observe I learned that like we really all have like an emotional connection to food.

00:10:33: And for people, even this experience can be triggering for different reasons, because yeah, we have like different connection to that.

00:10:42: So yeah, I learned about the diversity of the connection with this.

00:10:47: Claire, you said in the beginning that food is also love language.

00:10:51: So how can we use food to get a connection to ourselves, to other people and to use it also maybe in a sexual way?

00:10:59: I think a lot has to do with intention.

00:11:02: For example, when we cook for someone, it's something that it's very caring because there's a lot of thoughts, like a lot of effort, like going to the groceries and everything.

00:11:12: The same thing that the chefs are doing for the event.

00:11:16: So, um, so yeah, this is like the, the connection with the food is something that like is very like deep, uh, to some level and like as food like a love language.

00:11:31: it's something that like also the intention that we have with ourselves for example when we really connect and we close our eyes and it has a lot to do with expectation for example the experience that we have when we blindfold people.

00:11:45: for example if you have a carrot in front of you you expect the taste of a carrot and you most of the time we eat in an automatic way.

00:11:54: but when we are surprised and we are deprived from one sense then we are very merging with the exact sensation that is like in the mouth and we are very curious about what is happening or the memories that can come when we eat like a specific food.

00:12:10: What kind of people are attending your... Events.

00:12:15: People who love food, I hope.

00:12:18: But also people who are curious about that connection.

00:12:28: common factor for all these people is really curiosity around this and people don't want to have sex.

00:12:35: They want to connect.

00:12:37: This is really something important.

00:12:39: And we have people who are very experienced, for example, in the BDSM scene or in the kinky scene and some people who are absolute beginners.

00:12:47: They've never been to a KitKat, they've never been to any like sex-potive events, they've never been anywhere.

00:12:53: and they they feel that this experience would be an entrance to this world because it's very slow-cooked because sometimes you have sex-productive events where it's not better or not worse but it's just different.

00:13:11: but some sex-productive events where we go and then in five minutes we're all naked and ten minutes later everyone is fucking everywhere which is not the case here at all.

00:13:21: so we attract different kind of people.

00:13:23: So you describe the beginning of your events and how do they end?

00:13:27: Is everyone showering after it?

00:13:30: So what can I expect like in the middle and in the end of your events?

00:13:35: So it's not as messy as people think.

00:13:38: At the very beginning actually we had a workshop that would be like the entrance for the play space where people would like paint on each other bodies with chocolate.

00:13:47: So that was so messy.

00:13:48: So we stopped doing this.

00:13:50: so yeah obviously people take shower for after the experiences but um let's hear for whether it is for the long format or the short format we have like a slow landing as well.

00:14:03: so we gather everyone and we have also like a popcorn feedback and like we send like aftercare email where if we feature all the people we collaborate with and also with some words to like help sometimes to integrate the experience.

00:14:19: So, so yeah, this is not like, okay, now it is over, like, I'll finish your bite and go home.

00:14:25: Yeah.

00:14:26: Yeah.

00:14:27: So what are people telling you after it?

00:14:29: What did they take with them?

00:14:32: So yeah, from from what I heard and also from the feedback that we have the honor to have an hour like transparent page from what I read.

00:14:42: Sometimes people feel that there was like, and I think for me that's the most beautiful compliment that someone could ever say is that they felt safe at the event.

00:14:52: Because it's also something I would never say that this is like a safe event.

00:14:56: Like, of course, I create the container to be as safe as possible.

00:14:59: But when people themselves say that it's safe, like it's a huge compliment for me and the team.

00:15:05: and also for some people that was like a fantasy to explore the connection between the two and some people also with some setting for example the complete naked event.

00:15:18: this is a big step for a lot of people to be completely naked for nine hours with strangers in a room.

00:15:26: so and sometimes we all carry like body shame or sexual shame and like when people say at the end of the event that like actually like that was something that could be also liberating.

00:15:39: this is something like.

00:15:40: that is very precious to hear.

00:15:43: How many people are working on one event like for two days?

00:15:46: Like how many people do you need to create this kind of extraordinary feast event?

00:15:53: So we have a team around like eight to ten people with the art performers like the food artist and the kitchen team and also facilitators and helpers.

00:16:04: The pictures on your Instagram are very funny also.

00:16:09: So is the play part of it also important to be playful?

00:16:14: Yeah, so much.

00:16:17: Like, I love food pens.

00:16:19: I love... like also dark humor.

00:16:21: i love like because i think like sometimes.

00:16:24: so originally the event was rooted in tentra but um with my ex-business partner and me we met in a tantra festival in India almost like five years ago.

00:16:36: we really connected over.

00:16:37: the fact that we did not resonate so much on how tantra was being preached was a bit too dogmatic and too gendered as well.

00:16:43: so we wanted to bring like more lightness because we can tackle like serious topic but still with humor and like having something.

00:16:54: that is like like making people laugh.

00:16:56: it's also when you know sex when you laugh when you have sex and you laugh.

00:17:00: this is something that's like very liberating as well.

00:17:03: So yeah, playfulness is very important, especially with food, because when we are a kid, we play with food and usually in our adult life, people are like, oh, don't play with your food, eat right, like blah blah, so like people are not used to play with that.

00:17:18: So the playful element is very like a core concept also.

00:17:22: What would you recommend for everyone who's at home now and wants to cook something sexy at home and want to invite some people?

00:17:29: So what is good with you want to do a little feast at home?

00:17:33: I would maybe tell them to think about the experience they want to create, how messy they want this to be, and also to think out of the box.

00:17:45: For example, if they love... pasta or carbonara or like any kind of like very long pasta.

00:17:53: so what if like someone can eat it but without forks and knife?

00:17:57: what would it be to like eat pasta spaghetti with your hands?

00:18:01: it's of course going to be messy.

00:18:03: It can be also like breaking the rules of how like people interact.

00:18:07: if you can also create like a sensual dinner for yourself and that could be the very I think interesting experience to eat in front of a mirror We never do that But if you put a mirror in front of you that would be very embarrassing in the first minute.

00:18:22: But also this is something that can like connect you differently with yourself, but like yeah for a dinner I would like maybe Yeah, like tell them to connect with the food that make them feel like emotional or how or how what kind of memory it brings to have like maybe your story to tell behind this food.

00:18:42: On your website, I can read who tells us that playing with food is bad.

00:18:47: So what are the reactions when you tell someone what you do for work?

00:18:52: I think like sometimes people think this is a fetish event.

00:18:57: That's people would like fetishize which is not the case at.

00:19:01: the event is very much more soft and exploratory.

00:19:05: But yeah, people are quite surprised because at first like they don't really understand and then like Yeah, this it seems quite obvious.

00:19:14: And then they have not like a lot of like ideas how this can play.

00:19:19: they would imagine like I don't know like forty people all naked covered in like spaghetti.

00:19:26: But this is not the case.

00:19:28: It's more like a bit more sensitive than this.

00:19:32: So is there any kind of selection process before the events that you don't have too much persons from one gender or something?

00:19:40: how does it work?

00:19:41: So people have to apply for the event and then they have to file up like a funny forum with them doing like a twenty minute interview with me and then I create like a group that would like be like fitting together and we like keep a balance between people who are introverted extroverted different like different like any kind of gender but like we because I've been to so many events where it's like Overpopulated with people who identify as a male and like that would be like.

00:20:11: this is can be a bit oppressing.

00:20:13: so

00:20:13: sausage party

00:20:16: This one is only for people who have like a

00:20:19: yes, but you have this expression that you say it's a sausage party.

00:20:22: Yeah,

00:20:23: yeah.

00:20:26: So yeah, I try to can keep a balance with people who are like non binary.

00:20:30: who identifies a female as a male?

00:20:33: or

00:20:34: Where do you host the events?

00:20:36: in a kitchen here or in a private

00:20:39: house?

00:20:39: We have private venues.

00:20:42: Either it's like a penthouse of like two hundred fifty square meters or like a very artsy flat that can host like around between thirty and forty participants.

00:20:52: What are your plans for next year?

00:20:54: any extraordinary new ideas or you want to continue your work or what is what is coming?

00:21:00: Yeah,

00:21:01: I definitely wish to like do more format of like what we actually do like the naked event.

00:21:08: It's called bring the hot sauce.

00:21:10: I want to do like something that has been postponed this year, but this is going to be for twenty twenty six, which is something called the sausage edition for the owners only.

00:21:19: That was also like very important.

00:21:22: for me and the team to bring something a bit different in the scene in that regard.

00:21:28: I would like to also throw different formats of the big event.

00:21:34: And like my dream would be to create like a I was imagining kind of a Roman like castle or like a castle where I have this image of people like eating grapes with like some Roman music and like having something that will be like for five days like really with cooking classes of like this how to design food and like a lot of like Like, yeah, workshop around that and like something more deep.

00:22:00: And I also would love to, I'm like, right now working on doing a collaboration with an amazing person in Paris called Colette Confesse to do an event also in Paris.

00:22:11: Hironi, they want to have a castle now in Italy.

00:22:16: So maybe this is a nice place.

00:22:19: I will get in touch.

00:22:23: Clara, is there any kind of wish do you have for the society?

00:22:27: How could we connect better to sex and food at once?

00:22:30: Do you have any big wish?

00:22:32: What we all could do better when it comes to these things?

00:22:36: For me, it's really the intention and also regarding food, the sustainability of it and having something that would be of course as local as possible.

00:22:49: on the societal level, really being conscious about... how we have sex and how we have food and like being very like creative and like like trying to let go of like the shame that we have sometimes around food and around sex and like being creative about like how we for ourselves like not following like a booklet or anything but for ourselves how we can do things differently.

00:23:16: and it starts in a like personal level for example like like I would like for the people listening to us like if I don't know like trying to eat like an orange like in in the bathtub like when you take a shower take an orange like super juicy and like just eat it like having the drip all over the body like eating something different in another context can bring something like like different during the day and like spark something new.

00:23:42: My wish for twenty-six is that I want to come to one of your events.

00:23:48: They look so amazing.

00:23:50: I really like to come.

00:23:51: I don't have a sausage or a penis, so this will not be my format, but I will find another one and we can find all your things on Instagram or on your website.

00:24:03: Yeah, it's.

00:24:03: the website is www.wefeast.life.

00:24:07: You also have a cookbook.

00:24:09: And we, yeah, we have a cookbook to design do-it-yourself experiences feasts at home.

00:24:13: But you will be absolutely welcome at the event.

00:24:18: Thank you very much.

00:24:18: Thank you so much.

00:24:19: Now

00:24:19: I'm hungry.

00:24:21: Let's go eat.

00:24:22: Now I'm very

00:24:23: hungry.

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00:24:35: Listen to us next time and remember, love is everywhere.

00:24:38: You're sneaky.