Carl Ruggles Christmas Breakfast 1963

2007, 9:02 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video

In her earliest film, which has been newly transferred to video, Schneemann presents an abstracted portrait of the American composer Carl Ruggles, known for his irascible personality and finely-crafted atonal music. Ruggles is seen enjoying pie a la mode and ruminating on subjects ranging from Christmas to his incomplete opera The Sunken Bell. The hand-painted film stock heightens the impressionistic vitality of this snapshot of the 84-year-old composer, who is heard paraphrasing Freud: "Everything that you do is a matter of sex. That is the great passion of life."

 
 

This is a video transfer of a work initially shot on film. This is best shown as a projection, to reflect the original medium.
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