Movies: Ericka Beckman

New York's No Wave scene, recorded on Super-8mm, performing in a sparse downtown loft....

This collaborative video project is based on a short story by H.G. Wells called "The Country of the Blind"—about a man who travels to a country of blind people and attempts to dominate their sensual, feminine culture with his male, sight-derived powe...

Almost forty years after its first appearance in You The Better, the house returns as a character in Beckman’s new work Reach Capacity, now symbolising real estate. The economic and political elements and the structure of the film are closely associa...

A short survey of the small-gauge narrative film, beginning with the Kuchars' Sylvia's Promise (1962). Primarily focused on East Coast artists, the work of Eric Mitchell, Manuel DeLanda and Ericka Beckman is highlighted....

A three-part video epic in which avant-garde artist Vito Acconci explores the relationship between the self and national mythology. Through multiple vignettes, Acconci brings together a collage of music, photographs, diorama, experimental theater and...

Short film....

Says Beckmann of her film: "SWITCH CENTER is a tribute to the futuristic architecture of the Soviet postwar period, and a reaction to seeing it transitioned to shopping malls or global corporate office structures. I was invited by Balazs Bela Studio ...

“THE BROKEN RULE is my reaction to the American education system, where learning blocks must be acquired by the group before any individual can progress to the next level. My film pictures learning blocks as relay races conducted by male players, whe...

“CINDERELLA is a musical treatment of the fairy tale. I have broken apart the story and set it as a mechanical game with a series of repetitions where CINDERELLA is projected back and forth like a ping-pong ball between the hearth and the castle. She...

Short film created for the exhibition Ericka Beckman: Power of the Spin featuring an excerpt from John Zorn’s The Clavicle of Solomon...

"Tension Building is a composite of linked architectural spaces, some are real and some are models. It combines stop motion and live action filmmaking shot at the Harvard University Coliseum in Boston (1935) and the Municipal Stadium in Florence (193...

The film explores the phenomenon of when two things are perceived at the same time – as when two images combine in a double exposure. There is an ambiguity in their hierarchy. They might be perceived apart, joined together, one after the other, or on...

Frame UP is an 8-minute dual screen film that utilizes the construction zone of the Walker Art Center’s museum expansion as the platform for a hybrid pinball/croquette game played by two off screen players. The game begins when the crane, spinning at...

“HIATUS is a 20-minute experimental narrative film about a young woman who plays HIATUS, an on-line interactive ‘identity’ game. Propelled through action by her Go-Go cowgirl construct Wanda, and powered by a computer corset that stores her programs ...

“OUT OF HAND is a search film, where a small boy returns to a house that is being evacuated, to search for something that he left behind. His method is to follow hidden clues in this house and to respond to the hidden aids in his memory. Back and fo...

STALK is a 23-minute experimental single screen film created from the elements of an October 2021 NYC Performa Biennial commission. Adapted from the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk, STALK is a critique of corporate farming using GMO seeds and the ef...

“YOU THE BETTER is a film based on games of chance, and as games such as roulette, or craps go, this one is closed – meaning that the player cannot really affect the outcome. A team of uniformed players, led by the artist Ashley Bickerton, performs ...

Short film....

“Mario was a construction; the girl tried to imitate it. But she knew there was more that she could do. Mario limited her. In my imagination I saw a competitive relationship that could only go so far. In making this film I combined the ‘real’ with...

"I was asking if language can express action in any meaningful way. I chose a structure for this film. In the first half, a set of images followed verbal commands. Each image served as an object to answer a command. Then I let the images play without...