Two Films by Beatrice Gibson
Agatha is an intimate account, filmed and narrated by Beatrice Gibson, of an expedition to a planet without speech and and the protagonist’s memories of the people he encountered there . The film starts with a description of the story as a ‘sexual reminiscence’ and the role of ‘Psychometric Suggestibility Counter Class AMM’ which the narrator feels unqualified for. Information is given about the planetary ‘system’ as an erratic soundtrack of string and wood instruments hums and strains away alongside. Tiny insects are detected amongst the flora. This polyphony of sensations provides counterpoint to the detailed narration which alludes to the locals’ nuanced forms of identity, perception and communication.
Gibson’s film is based on a dream recorded by Cornelius Cardew, the British composer who founded the Scratch Orchestra, an ensemble that famously privileged participants’ pure expression over their formal musical technique. Here, through the narrator’s psycho-sensual-geography, conventional understanding is gradually given up to an alternative logic, approaching an equivalence between movements and sounds: where walking is language and where Agatha’s ‘colour-changing’ are both forms of response and influence.
The Tiger’s Mind, another new film by Gibson showing in the Fly into the Mystery screening, uses Cardew’s 1967 text-based composition of the same title to structure the film. Six artists were invited to interpret the score through conversation. Exploring themes such as the meaning of interpretation and the capacity of text and image to activate thinking and participation, the group collaboratively formed the subject of their discussion, and the film, through its own production. Following the reflexive nature of her working process, as well as the film, Gibson finally returned the live score of the conversation to print for a forthcoming publication of the same name, which is being produced for Sternberg Press in collaboration with Will Holder.
Shama Khanna
Agatha and The Tiger’s Mind by Beatrice Gibson will be screened in the mixed programme FLY INTO THE MYSTERY, alongside works by Mary Helena Clark, Janie Geiser, Lewis Klahr and Laida Lertxundi.
Link to more info on FLY INTO THE MYSTERY here
FLY INTO THE MYSTERY screenings :-
Sunday 21 October 2012, at 9pm, BFI Southbank NFT3