You the Better USA 1983, 16 mm, 30 min
We Imitate; We Break up USA 1978, Super 8 transferred to 16 mm, 30 min
This introductory screening will feature two early ‘image-game’ films by Ericka Beckman. You The Better 1983 features Ashley Bickerton among a team of uniformed players who take on ‘House’ in casino games resembling roulette or the rolling dice game, ‘craps’. These competitive activities, motivated by a desire for wealth and based on the rules of chance, are played out on courts designed on the repetitious forms of suburban sprawl, dark claustrophobic spaces that emphasise quotidian anxiety. We Imitate, We Break Up 1978, the first in the ‘Piaget trilogy’, is an earlier work based on the game of mirroring through images. Here a character played by the artist tries to reproduce the movements of a constructed puppet ‘Mario’, playing out the confrontation of the ‘real’ body with the ‘constructed’ one. Beckman said at the time of producing the film, she realised both bodies, the real and its image, ‘had to remain apart working in tandem as a relationship, thus their meaning now included competition and cooperation.’ The title refers to the process when the game of mirroring or mimicking becomes overpowering; games as psychological as they are physical.
Programme duration 60 min