Uncanny in its turning inside out, signifiers empty themselves, a bite once juicy, fulfilled, tantalising even—the tongue grasps, the saliva drips, but the content is hollow; an allegory for an insatiable appetite, contorted by capitalism.
The surface gleams with a promise it cannot keep: not nourishment, but its choreography. This is consumption inverted – not devouring, but being devoured. The object stares back, assertive, unyielding. The apple is no longer passive fruit, but agentic form, metabolising attention. Desire itself mutates, attaching not to things but to circuits: screens, gestures, patterns of craving. The worm, no longer merely hidden, becomes structural – an unseen instigator threading through architectures of compulsion. Hunger no longer signals lack, but perpetuity: a cycle that feeds on suspension, on the fantasy of the next bite.
Within this dance of hunger and haunting lies a more entangled intimacy. If the host is both eater and eaten, then the roles themselves become unstable – ambiguous, always shifting. “Host” and “guest” share a linguistic root—ghos-ti—a trace of reciprocal obligation that resists clear delineation.
But what if we ingested the worm?
Michel Serres, in his seminal text The Parasite, argues that the parasite is not merely a destructive force but a catalyst of change in the system of linear hierarchies. It unsettles binaries not by rupture, but by interference. In this way, the parasite reveals the instability of all fixed roles: host becomes guest, guest becomes host, both constituted by flows that resist containment.
,,I had put the cockroach matter into my mouth; I had finally performed the lowest of all acts. Not the greatest of all acts as I had thought before, not heroism or sainthood. But in the final analysis, the lowest of all acts was what I had always needed [. . .] The world interdepended with me – that was the confidence I had reached: the world interdepended with me, and I am not understanding what I say, never! never again shall I understand what I say. For how will I be able to speak without the words lying for me?”
In Clarice Lispector’s story an annymous character G.H. performs ‘the lowest of all acts‘ – by ingesting the pest she then becomes it. She feels, sees, hears and touches the world differently.
The Hollow Bite challenges the capitalist insistence on individuality and reexamines parasitism as something more than negative – a site of potential within contemporary power relations. What might emerge if we embraced the parasite as a radical figure through which to reimagine the Self, not as a singular, gendered entity, but as an interconnected creature, entangled in mutual dependencies?
The insatiable algorithms, the fetishized objects, the viral economies of attention; pop culture becomes a self-replicating parasite, feeding on our desires while dictating them in turn. We are all spinning in a spectacle of decay. And perhaps, within that decay, lies the possibility of transformation.
Curated by ACUD Galerie team:
Alžběta Čermáková, Gabriela Matuszewska & Colette Patterson
