Geophagy or the Artist’s Diet
Video: 2’ 44”
2008
The Argentine artist Victor Grippo exhibited a reflection in his installation “La comida del artista” (1991) in which he expressed his concern for the professional situation in which creators live. In this piece, the artist pointed out the way artists are usually rewarded with golden delicacies when they conform to the system, whereas, inversely, they are paid with earth food if they decide to take risks in every work.
This video performance is presented as a self-recording where, before a static camera, Larrea acts the part of a diner with no other food to eat than a few spoonfuls of dirt. The making of this piece refers to a legendary sequence from the film “The Gold Rush” (1942) by Charley Chaplin, wherein the protagonist goes to the extreme of eating his own boots in order to survive in Alaska during the “gold fever”.
The tragicomic overtones of the video are accentuated by the detail of the music that can be heard in the background, the symphonic poem by Richard Strauss “A Hero’s Life” (1898), which is meant as a somewhat sarcastic allusion to the epic sacrifice involved in this undertaking.
Video stills
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