Life-raft Earth. 1969. USA. Directed by Robert Frank. With Hugh Romney, Stewart Brand. 16mm courtesy June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, distributed by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 37 min.
Life-raft Earth is a fascinating document of cyberculture’s (and techno-libertarianism’s) origin myths in the counterculture movement of 1960s Menlo Park. In October 1969, Robert Frank was recruited by Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand and his friend Hugh Romney, the performance artist and activist better known as Wavy Gravy, to film “The Hunger Show,” a weeklong “starve-in” staged by California’s Portola Institute to decry worldwide overpopulation and famine. As he shot the film, Frank found himself questioning his commitment to political activism and collective living.
Food. 1971. USA. Directed by Gordon Matta-Clark. Cinematography by Matta-Clark, Robert Frank, Suzanne Harris, Danny Seymour. 16mm courtesy Lightcone. 47 min.
In October 1971, on the corner of Wooster and Prince streets, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark joined with the investor and photographer Carol Goodden, the choreographer Trisha Brown, and the performance artist Tina Girouard to create a cheap restaurant that would employ and cater to starving artists and other denizens of the desolate frontier that was Soho. It is said that this utopian idea of communal dining and performance—”relational aesthetics” avant le lettre—also helped popularize sushi and farm-to-table locavore culture in New York. Robert Frank, together with Matta-Clark, Suzanne Harris, and Danny Seymour, did the camera and sound work on this little gem of a film.