A Budding Gourmet

A cook cant just mix things up says a woman with a typical Brooklyn accent while the camera shows sophisticated images from food and travel magazines In this blackandwhite video her first in this format Martha Rosler explores the relationship between gastronomy class and breeding A silhouetted woman hiding her face from the camera describes her efforts to improve her status and that of her family through gastronomy With a deadpan voice and accompanied by the strains of a violin concerto the woman explains why she wants to become a gourmet The text comes from one of Roslers postcard novels entitled Budding Gourmet also written in 1974 in which in eleven chapters the artists tells the story in the first person of a woman wanting to learn haute cuisine to climb the social ladder