“Earlier this year, I visited Ericka Beckman’s New York studio to watch some of her films. We began with You the Better (1983), which premiered almost 30 years ago at the New York Film Festival, co-billed with Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion (1982). Godardians were unimpressed with her ‘punk post-structuralism’ and hurled abuse at the screen. Carrie Rickey reported in that December’s Artforum: ‘If the fate of all great art is to be at first misunderstood, then Beckman’s film, hands down, was the greatest film at the festival […] [it] was the only truly vanguard achievement and the only analysis and indictment of the competition that keeps the wheel of fortune spinning.’ In a practice spanning 35 years, Beckman’s films combine choreographed set pieces and ‘designed camera movements’ that expose the logic of group sports and computer gaming in what she calls, ‘the performance of the image’. And now, when technology- enabled image-exchange – think of ‘sharing’ your pictures on Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – is marketedas connective fun but sold as someone else’s asset, her work is more relevant thanever….”
