Jan Švankmajer – Principles of Imagination in a Gourmet Geyser

11. 10. 2022

Jan Švankmajer, ›Meat Love‹, 1988

Anything can come to life in Jan Švankmajer's imagination, even meat in love in an ironic mode combining neediness with greed. In the one-minute film sketch Zamilované maso (Meet Love, 1988), the act of two steaks breaking free from the captivity of a large leg of meat comes alive in the directness and imagination of hidden meanings. The two solitaires establish a certain form of attraction and, it seems, intimacy between them. Reciprocally, they probe their brief shared space-time encircled by human conveniences, oblivious to the hostile signals of knives, sharpened forks, graters, pots and red-hot pans. They check themselves out egoistically in a polished spoon while rollicking, wooing and seducing each other. The music from the transistor relaxes the atmosphere, dampens the awareness of a threat. The forbidden release escalates, during dancing and flirting in a dishtowel gown, into an amorous act in a flour duvet, only to have the moment of ecstasy cut short by the direct hit of a fork and the betrayal of a hot frying pan.

The film carries a metaphor for interpersonal relationships. The intuitive bond evokes the fragility and vulnerability of an individual’s freedom. Not only in the film but also in Švankmajer's entire body of work, we encounter magic, dreams, horror and the dark humour of life's crudeness. One of the main principles of Jan Švankmajer's work is the display of surreal imagination through emotion. The means of expression are metaphors, experimentation, animation and special effects reflected in the bottomless geyser of imagination and ironic satire of the consumerism of life.

Similarly, in Jídlo (Food, 1992), Švankmajer alludes to the society-wide problem of conditions and real human needs. Food represents a necessity of life for humans but also a connection with everyday rituals. The quality, availability and degree of abundance are subject to the standard of living, whim, but also destabilization. The screenplay for Food was written already in the 1970s, during a period of deep normalisation, when Jan Švankmajer was banned from filmmaking and the film could not be made. In 1990, the script was published in the Slovak magazine Romboid.¹ The topicality of the issue is still present. It depicts the social and moral decline of civilisational values in contrast to the polarity of lack of quality food, excess and senseless waste. Švankmajer himself adds: "This civilization lives at the expense not only of a wide stratum of society, even of entire ethnic groups, but also on the credit of future generations. It lives and stuffs itself in debt, whatever the cost."²

The film Food has three parts: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Breakfast takes place around a food vending machine, besieged by a queue of hungry people waiting for their superficial ration of sausage, mustard and bread along with a cup of beer, as a temporary filling for their empty bellies. The vending machine works on a relay principle. Once used, it passes on its role to the just-fed diner. Ecology is put aside on the pile of greasy paper trays, cups and Bakelite cutlery lying around. The long queue waiting for their daily ration is in no hurry. According to the script, it is a grotesque "caricature of the efforts to speed up the food procedure by saving time in the interest of efficient use of labour for production where time drags on with the same lethargy as in the days when the spectre of market-economic breathlessness was miles away from frightening anyone".³

One level up is the Lunch episode. The storyline moves to a restaurant. There is a table, a tablecloth, cutlery and a vase of strawflowers, indifferent staff and two hungry diners, left to their own devices. When they run out of patience, they eat everything in sight, step by step. From the plates, tablecloth, table and chairs, they move onto their own shoes and clothes until they reach the head-to-head stage. Hunger knows no boundaries and opens the door to the jungle.

Dinner is concluded in a cannibalistic fashion, wrapped in sumptuous "luxury" with refined gourmet flair. The protagonist of the dinner successively serves himself on a plate. He nails a fork to his wooden prosthetic arm and proceeds to the four-course act of eating his own body: arm, leg, breasts and member. We are witnessing a metaphor of human aggressiveness combined with expansiveness and constant dissatisfaction. Food itself, however, represents life in the principle of the universe. It holds up a mirror to the essence of real life.

Image captions

1–5 | Jan Švankmajer, ›Meat Love‹, 1988

The Romboid 25 magazine, 1990, No. 10.
Jan Švankmajer, Power of Imagination, 2001, p. 172.
Script quotation from the film Jídlo. The Romboid 25 magazine, 1990, No. 10.

Pavlína Vogelová

is a curator of photography and film at the Historical Museum of the Czech National Museum and a PhD candidate at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She was previously employed by the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Her research focuses on intermedia elements in documentary art and experimental work in photography and film in relation to history, science, art and education.

Jan Švankmajer

(*1934, Prague), a visual philosopher, magician, collector and filmmaker, one of the most original and important animators in the history of film, influencing directors such as Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton and the Quay brothers, is one of the world's most prominent personalities of surrealist and imaginative filmmaking. Švankmajer's work is shrouded in originality and visualised absurdity of the human unconscious, serving up rationed lessons in perception, built on a cocktail of fragments of the grotesqueness of everyday situations.

#42 Food

Food is a basic physical need of every living creature. In the context of human society, issues around food and food security are seen as a continuous, necessary process associated with the production, distribution, presentation, consumption and disposal of goods and services. In this constellation, what role does photography play in recording and presenting representations of food and other associated themes related to food issues that address societal customs, traditions, and issues that cut across human and natural history? Food photography is almost never about the food itself. It relates to hierarchies, the division of roles in providing, preparing, serving, and making available one’s own consumption, both in domestic and public settings. It observes culture, structure, quality and targeting in relation to health and the environment. It looks at the professions associated with the phenomenon of food, highlighting open trade, the commerciality of sales, promotion; the importance, function and problematic nature of packaging and waste management. It is interested in the practices and quality of food management. We are witnessing the constant development of the cult of food and food excess. This is a massive expansion of food production, hand in hand with marketing strategies that contribute to a sufficiently authentic experience and convey the product as a unique experience enveloped in a range of positive emotions. The crunch of a crisp, the sound of opening a can of cold drink, the moment of smelling a cup of fresh coffee, the expansion of the taste buds after tasting a piece of chewing gum and the ever glistening, melting rich layer of cheese on a slice of ham pizza are the essential spices of these strategies based on working with the subconscious and reflexes. This is not the end of the spectrum of food-related issues, for on the other side of it is inevitably the starvation of millions of people that cannot be disregarded, the inability to provide affordable sustainable diets along with the biodiversity of ecosystems. What are the environmental challenges currently associated with food production and what will the diet of the future look like?