BECKMAN, Ericka
Fair Game

In the early 1980s, before gamification and social media interactions became part of everyone’s daily life, Ericka Beckman was already exploring these themes in her films. Fair Game is the first publication in German about Beckman’s practice, released on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name. It is a cooperative undertaking by M Leuven and Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, where Beckman’s pioneering videos are presented for the first time in Germany.

The words of Marie de Brugerolle, Mark Cutler, and Valerie Verhack steer us directly into Beckman’s primary-color universe through an analysis of the animated multimedia installation Nanotech Players (1989) and two pivotal films—Beckman’s first 16mm film, You the Better (1983) and her latest effort, Reach Capacity (2020). The latter are separated by almost forty years, and yet both deal with a highly topical matter: games as a means of structuring capitalist society.

[publisher's note]

Published by Mousse Publishing, 2021
Monographs / Exhibition Catalogues