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Promotional art for How to Bake a Cake in the Digital Age
Cover image credit: via TMDB

How to Bake a Cake in the Digital Age

Christina Catherine Martinez

YouTube · 2024 · 31 min

An anti-cooking show that functions as a highbrow breakdown.

Christina Catherine Martinez stages a cooking show that refuses to begin, performing stand-up in an empty Los Angeles gallery to an audience of only her film crew. Part performance art and part clowning, the half-hour special subverts the standard stand-up format by playing with the boundaries between performer, character, and director. Martinez puts on an apron and sets up her workspace, but actual baking remains a constantly receding horizon while she walks the line of an on-camera breakdown.

Filmed in November 2020 at the Human Resources Gallery in Los Angeles, the project spent years in festival and TV development purgatory before dropping on YouTube in 2024. Martinez, an established art critic who also trained at the Philippe Gaulier clown school in France, brings a highbrow, physical sensibility to the screen. The special was named a standout release by New York Magazine, reflecting her reputation in the Los Angeles alternative scene as a writer for The Eric Andre Show.

The set list

1 bit

  1. How to bake a cake in the digital age

    Introduced while pulling an apron over her head; devolves into a stream of consciousness discussing brunch as 'middle class cosplay' and reeling from the broken promises of the industrial age rather than delivering actual baking instructions.

How it plays

Tone
Absurd, experimental, deconstructive, and dryly satirical.
On stage
Conceptually highbrow and physically slapstick; a hybrid of stand-up, clown, and performance artist who plays with character and the appearance of having an emotional breakdown.
Pace
Stream of consciousness, balancing clown logic and physical performance with scripted material and Foley sound design.
About
the constructed nature of filmed comedy specials, the constructed nature of the performer, cooking show tropes, brunch as middle class cosplay, broken promises of the industrial age

What the critics said

Praised as a big swing of experimentation in form and content that is absurdly funny and redefines the pandemic-era comedy special format.

In the room: An audience of no one except the small filming crew, some of whom may or may not be figments of sound design.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: christinacatherine.info, themoviedb.org, now-instant.la, thecomedybureau.com, vulture.com, timeout.com.

Backstory

Filmed in November 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic at Human Resources Gallery in Los Angeles, performed without an audience other than the small camera crew. Based on a personal stand-up piece she originated earlier in her career.

Details

Released
Taped
2020, Human Resources Gallery, Los Angeles
Runtime
31 min
Where
YouTube
Director
Christopher Richmond
Honors
Named A Comedy Special You Should Definitely Watch by New York Magazine
Topics

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