Ericka Beckman

Ericka Beckman (born 1951) makes films without plots in a conventional sense, constituting them instead from themes: socialization, acculturation, competition and the organization of thoughts and memory. Since they are largely structured like games, they do not have characters; they have players. Like everything else about the films--the scenery, the props, the animation--the players are representatives, stand-ins contributing to Beckman's abstract ruminations on culture in a time-based medium. This lavishly illustrated reference monographs documents every film Ericka Beckman has made since her days as a CalArts graduate in the 1970s, and includes storyboards, production stills and notes, the librettos of her musicals, as well as a thorough photo-documentation of her multimedia installations. Together with an anthology of critical writing on the artist's work, the book features an interview encompassing the artist's entire career by Lionel Bovier and Fabrice Stroun, as well as new contributions by Vera Dika, John Beeson, Jeanne Graff, Geraldine Tedder and renowned game theorist Eric Zimmerman.

Ericka Beckman began making super-8 films in New York’s late-1970s No Wave scene, alongside artists of the “Pictures Generation.” This DVD contains her Super-8 Piaget trilogy: We Imitate; We Break Up (1978); The Broken Rule (1979); and Out of Hand (1980): three giddy, game-playing choreographies whose hypnotic rhythms draw inspiration from child psychology and early cartoons, and star such artist-friends as Mike Kelley, Matt Mullican and James Casebere. Jim Hoberman described We Imitate; We Break Up as “a high school gym class taught by Georges Méliès in a space designed by Giorgio de Chirico” and Out of Hand “like an Allstate Insurance commercial as it might appear to an autistic child.” In these now classic films, Beckman’s orchestrated robotic movements, bright costumes, deadpan jump-rope mantras and looping or frenetic soundtracks offer postpunk lessons in behavioral patterns.