Recent Work by Beatrice Gibson

This program screens for free at UT’s Downtown Gallery. Times listed below.

The films of Beatrice Gibson are perfectly tuned for Big Ears. The London-based artist has a keen interest in modernist, experimental music, which has directly influenced her own collaborative and shape-shifting approach to cinema. She addresses that interest most directly in F for Fibonacci (2014), which alludes to Karlheinz Stockhausen and draws connections between impossible symmetries found in nature and the ambitions of serialist composers (while also transforming Minecraft into a rich and wicked analogy for late capitalism). Likewise, The Tiger’s Mind (2012) and Agatha (2012) both grew out of a larger project inspired by the composer Cornelius Cardew and his work with the influential British improvisational group AMM.

Along with the three earlier shorts, which will be presented as a one-hour loop, we will also host a single screening of I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead (2018) on the first day of Big Ears. Conceived soon after the election of Donald Trump, in collaboration with poets CAConrad and Eileen Myles, the 20-minute film argues forcefully, in both content and form, for the necessity of art in a time of anxiety and despair. It’s emblematic of her work in that it laments the failures of collective action – both political and artistic – while also finding hope and beauty in the struggle. Note to cinephiles: I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead ends with one of the most joyful and unexpected homages you’ll ever see.

While Gibson’s films have been exhibited widely in Europe and at major international film festivals, this is the largest program of her work to ever screen in the United States.