Asparagus 1979
EXPERIMENTAL TEST KITCHEN
Primal, sensual, mundane, ceremonial, addictive, symbolic, beautiful… Nourish yourself with the myriad flavors and forms of food in this colorful repast prepared in the unconventional kitchens of the avant garde. Here, food and eating may be a source of comedy, pleasure, intimacy, or—as in the case of Hollis Frampton—an intellectual dissection that reduces the nutrients to aesthetic units. Often representing creation and creativity, the foods here may allude to the body itself, its vitality and its mortality, as in Thom Andersen’s death of a sundae. In its biblical and mythical form, food is enlightenment and taboo; it is repetition and ritual, inseparable from the rhythms of life and of art. The social and psychological aspects of consumption may eventually evolve into a complex, fraught relationship, depicted irreverently by George Kuchar in Gastronomic Get-Away and by Anne Charlotte Robertson in her Magazine Mouth, a departure from her usually diaristic mode of filmmaking which often revolves around her love of food and her shifting weight. As seen here, food also is wrapped up in her concerns about her immediate physical and psychic environment and that of the world at large..
This feast was primarily harvested from the fertile soils of those who tilled the experimental film fields for long, yet are no longer with us—including two who recently passed: and Carolee Schneeman and Suzan Pitt whose dense, animated dream vision Asparagus was recently restored by the Academy Film Archive. Schneeman’s infamous carnal rite Meat Joy is a combination of three performances from 1964, which she re-edited in 2010. – Brittany Gravely
Special thanks: Tim Massett, Amy Sloper, John Quackenbush, Liz Coffey, Video Data Bank and the Harvard Film Archive.
-Catfilm for Katy and Cynne – Standish Lawder (1972, color, 16mm, 4 min)
-Carrots and Peas – Hollis Frampton (1969, color, 16mm, 6 min)
-Kitchen Beets – Bea Haut (2019, b/w, 16mm, 1 min)
-Breakfast-Michael Snow (1972, 16mm, 15min)
-Melting – Thom Andersen (1965, color, 16mm, 6 min)
-Meat Joy – Carolee Schneemann (1964/2010, color, DCP, 6 min.)
-Gastronomic Get-Away – George Kuchar (1991, color, DCP, 14 min)
-Magazine Mouth- Anne Charlotte Robinson (1984, color DCP)
-Asparagus – Suzan Pitt (1979, color, DCP, 18 min.)