Reach Capacity

Reach Capacity

2020 · 13 min

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 associated with the most famous of all board games dealing with real estate, Monopoly. Its origins go back to the early 1900s, when Elizabeth Magie created a first version of what she called The Landlord’s Game. Magie’s game had two sets of rules, a Prosperity set and a Monopolist set (only the latter was kept by Parker Brothers when they further developed the game without her). Magie’s aim was to illustrate how society as a whole thrives when monopolies are banished and income is distributed equally. Beckman takes over Magie’s dual game structure by having her screen flip over when a monopoly is reached.

Directed by Ericka Beckman · Written by Ericka Beckman

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Reach Capacity

Cinderella

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Cinderella

Cinderella · 1986

“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 never succeeds in satisfying the requirements of the ‘Cinderella Game’. The film was shot MOS, the dialogue is lip-synched, and along with the out-front score and effects track magnifies the film’s sense of alienation.” — E.B. 1984 - Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2017.

Blind Country

Blind Country · 1989

MovieComedyFantasy

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 power. Following this theme, "Blind Country" begins with animated fruit dancing over Mike Kelley's body and the admonition of "Northerners" to "refill the quickly emptying sack." In the male-dominated land of the North, candy-spurting pinatas stand as phallic symbols. Presumably castrated, and stripped of his authority, Kelley acts the buffoon as he is led through the murky land of the South, a "female," earthy, "realm of the senses" opposing the phallocentric world of the North.

Switch Center

Switch Center · 2003

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 in Budapest to produce a short experimental film in Hungary. I was the first American artist to be invited by this famous film collective after the fall of Soviet power". She would also describe the film as an homage to Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique.

You the Better

You the Better · 1983

“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 the mechanics of a game servicing an off-camera betting entity, the ‘House’. Although the game keeps changing and players are swapped out, one thing remains the same, the ‘House’ is hidden and controls the bets, the ‘chance’ of winning is nil. The game, in fact, is not between the players, but rather between the ‘House’, and the ‘Bettor’.” — E.B. 1983

135 Grand Street New York 1979

135 Grand Street New York 1979 · 2009

135 Grand Street New York 1979

MovieDocumentaryMusic

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

Stalk

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 effects of economic pressure on a small independent farming community. It features vocal work, performers and stop motion animation. STALK was shot in 16mm film, transferred to HD and edited on Avid Media Composer 8.5.

Frame Up

Frame Up · 2002

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 high speed in the center of the site, drops two balls down the chute of an elevator shaft. The construction workers and their materials become the flippers and paddles that careen balls against the obstacles in the construction site as it changes over time

Tension Building

Tension Building · 2014

Tension Building

"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 (1932), built in by Luigi Nervi. It features Boston Symphony Orchestra percussionist Richard Flanagan, and the U Mass Minute Man Marching Band. I used my camera like a surveyor’s transit and created some rules for its path around the stadium." - Ericka Beckman

Hiatus

“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 in a garden interface, Maid meets Wang, a powerful take-over artist. She must learn how to use the power of her ‘organic memory’ to block his expansion and preserve her freedom.” — E.B. 1999

Pointing To

Pointing To · 1974

Double Beds

Double Beds · 1976

We Imitate; We Break Up

We Imitate; We Break Up · 1978

We Imitate; We Break Up

“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 the ‘constructed’, proving for myself that these two aesthetics could not fuse together; they had to remain apart working in tandem as a relationship, thus their meaning now included competition and cooperation.” E.B.1978

White Man Has Clean Hands

White Man Has Clean Hands · 1976

White Man Has Clean Hands

"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 the verbal framework. In the first half of WHITE MAN, seeing the image is shortened or constrained by having to answer to verbal demands. The relaxation of structure in the second half, releases emotional and narrative qualities in the images themselves and their positions. White man can’t be blamed for the action. White man can’t see." -- E.B.

The Broken Rule

The Broken Rule · 1979

The Broken Rule

“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, where the girls are scores, and the goal is to enter the working world by the end of the game. Mike Kelley, the lead player in my film, makes a ritual out of his mistakes to escape the consequences of his mistakes. In this film, one person’s work is another person’s play, and play creates competition, a component of work.” — E.B. 1979

Out of Hand

Out of Hand · 1980

“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 forth, between inquisition and logic, he constructs a search with two unknowns – ‘What it is’ and ‘Where it is’. Each object he chooses has multiple functions, which extend both into the physical space of his search, and into the imaginary world of his perception and memory.” E.B. 1980

Hit and Run

Hit and Run · 1977

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 one dominates the other out completely. This ‘relationship’ is what I am intuitively exploring. Film sees the unconscious neither as rational, or irrational. Film is a system of relations.” — E.B. 1977

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