Routines and Rituals

Margaret Raspé’s films from the 1970s are influenced by many encounters with various filmmakers and artists, who frequently visited her at her Berlin home. She had contacts with people associated with Fluxus, such as Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, Joe Jones and Emmett Williams, and also with Günter Brus, Peter Kubelka, Hermann Nitsch, Gerhard Rühm, and Oswald Wiener, who all came to spend time in Raspé’s kitchen, where they ate together and talked, and where some of her films were made. “Schweineschnitzel was the first film that I made with a camera helmet after I had thought for a long time about aggression in the kitchen” (Raspé). In her camera helmet films the subjective gaze very directly presents an experience of processes and daily household routines like cooking and washing up, thereby greatly heightening their significance, while in her last film Anastenária – Das Fest der Feuerläufer von Lagadás (Anastenária – The Festival of the Fire Walkers of Lagadás) Raspè shows a condensed version of a ritual that she accompanied over several years with her camera. “The film is a reconstruction of the first day of the ritual, composed of many fragments that were filmed between 1978 and 1983. I wanted to allow an experience of the process and the metaphorical images of the ritual, and to convey some of the energetic reality that was created there.”

Program

Margaret Raspé,
Anastenária – Das Fest der Feuerläufer von Lagadás (Anastenária – The Festival of the Fire Walkers of Lagadás), 1978–1985, 86 min

Introductory words by Margaret Raspé (recorded)

A selection of Margaret Raspé’s camera helmet films will be presented in the white space of mumok cinema:

Margaret Raspé,
Schweineschnitzel, 1971, 8 min
Der Sadist schlägt das eindeutig Unschuldige (The Sadist Beats the Unquestionably Innocent), 1971, 6 min
Alle Tage wieder – Let Them Swing, (Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow – Let Them Swing), 1974, 20 min

Margaret Raspé is an artist and filmmaker and lives in Berlin. Exhibitions, festival participations, performances, and lectures at home and abroad.

This program takes place on the occasion of the exhibition Re/Actions as part of Enjoy – the mumok Collection in Change.