Ed Atkins: Olde Food (2019, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
120 pages
English language
Published March 19, 2019 by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Distinctive, intimate and weird. Melancholic and nostalgic. Disturbing and at times, nauseating. and repetitive. A hyper-reality of the human body.
I don't really know how to describe this book but here's my take "https://athenareads.home.blog/2020/07/14/old-food-by-ed-atkins/">Old Food by Ed Atkins
A quote from Georges Bataille on the first page sets a tone and expectation for this work that frames Atkins' perspective and establishes his attitude. I'm willing to take an artistic vision on its own terms but here what I thought was a run up to Bataille's charge at establishment values was maybe just excusing the absence of narrative as "the accursed share." Perhaps this is what Atkins was alluding to in his interview at Berliner Festspiel when he said, describing Old Food, "...and I suppose, as ever, with so much of my work, it's kind of about what's not there - is never there - in these digital videos: is real people and real bodies."
So much for literature, the preeminent lens...
While Atkins suggests he is interested in figurations of lyrical grammar what resulted in Old Food were more like the words of insubstantial nutritional value described at …
A quote from Georges Bataille on the first page sets a tone and expectation for this work that frames Atkins' perspective and establishes his attitude. I'm willing to take an artistic vision on its own terms but here what I thought was a run up to Bataille's charge at establishment values was maybe just excusing the absence of narrative as "the accursed share." Perhaps this is what Atkins was alluding to in his interview at Berliner Festspiel when he said, describing Old Food, "...and I suppose, as ever, with so much of my work, it's kind of about what's not there - is never there - in these digital videos: is real people and real bodies."
So much for literature, the preeminent lens...
While Atkins suggests he is interested in figurations of lyrical grammar what resulted in Old Food were more like the words of insubstantial nutritional value described at the back end of the poem - near meaningless utterances without a congruent trajectory. It sounds pretty aloud but Bruno Schulz this is not. There is no warmth. No life. No generosity. No hope. There are no people.
So while this piece might be intellectually provocative it didn't strike me as very profound. Sure, riffing on the abstract outlines of sentence structure and Lacanian signifiers using a title as an origin and organizing motif is sort of cool... but why though? The Aristocrats joke does a similar thing with its title and content and I have to say it is more effectively meaningful than this. Our preeminent lens, in case he hasn't noticed, tends to ask AND answer questions. So as far as depositing a work of art into a context that might act as a unifying springboard I think Old Food needed more rigor.
In his own words:
"Like so much of it, it has that kind of - that thrill of a kind of unpacking something into a metaphoric, you know, meaning."
No, Ed, I don't know, but it's good to hear you enjoyed yourself.
Here's my hot take: scrap this printing and reissue the piece as a full color oversized cookbook. Hannah's Recipes. Charge $5,000 per copy.
