Object Lessons : David Askevold’s Learning about Cars and Chocolates

David Askevold’s video Learning About Cars and Chocolates (1972) stages a strange conversation. It is a conversation with strict parameters, designed to highlight and synchronize two flows of objects that pass through a scene.

The camera reveals Askevold’s torso and the lower part of his face in the upper right of the frame, facing more or less toward the viewer. In front of him is a pound of chocolates purchased from a specialty confectionery; beside him, an open window looks down onto a London street. Each time a car goes by, he asks: “What colour was that car? ” or “What kind of car was that? ” A voice answers from outside the frame: “That car was navy blue,” or perhaps: “That was brown, sort of a shoe-leather brown.” (The voice is Jack Wendler’s, Askevold’s London gallerist.) Askevold responds by biting into a chocolate and describing it to Wendler: “This one is white. There’s definitely a strong vanilla flavour, and there’s a little bit of pineapple in it, and little bits of nuts. I’m not sure what kind of nuts they are.”¹ 1 - All quotations in this description from Learning About Cars and Chocolates, by David Askevold (Toronto: Vtape, 1972), videocassette, 20:42. Special thanks to Wanda Vanderstoop at Vtape and Jonathan Newman at the National Gallery of Canada for their kind assistance in locating and accessing the video. He continues to ask mundane questions about the car’s mileage, cost, popularity, drivers, or speed, which Wendler obligingly answers until the next car comes around. Then, the cycle begins again: “What colour was that car? ”