Saturday
Saturday, February7th, 2009
I feel as though I could be playing hooky at the moment. I’ve got a loaf of banana bread in the oven and I’m doing — nothing. It’s amazing how delightful temperatures above freezing can be. Perhaps I’ll kiss my neighborhood goodbye by taking a walk to the liquor store.
My great indulgence for the day has been watching documentaries instead of getting off my ass and photographing the Walker for an architecture blog. I’ll do it tomorrow morning… when the light isn’t so punchy.
If you haven’t seen it already, Our Daily Bread is an amazing documentary/piece of video art. The film follows mechanized food production around Europe – from salmon fishing vessels in Norway to almond trees in Greece and Italy. Mostly consisting of long shots of workers and machines doing their business to make our lunches possible, the repetitive motions of how we get our food is interspersed with workers having their lunch breaks.
Two favorite moments:
-Workers trying to get bulls to mount cows… and then jumping in last second with a beaker to collect the semen.
-Workers endlessly, tirelessly piling soil around asparagus so that it never conducts photosynthesis and stays white.
The film is available on DVD from NetFlix and here is the trailer: