I hope I’m loud when I’m dead
Beatrice Gibson
‘this mechanistic world…has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry’ - CAConrad
I hope I’m loud when I’m dead by British director Beatrice Gibson is a dramatic and fast-moving elegy on life in the 21st century, recognizing poetry as a powerful tool to confront the uncertainties of our time. “Almost everything is OK”, says the artist in the video, “because their voices exist”. These are the voices of two of the most important American living poets, CAConrad and Eileen Myles, recorded by Gibson just prior to Donald Trumps’ inauguration as the 45th President of the United States in January 2017. Blended together with extracts from other great female poets quoted in the video - Audre Lorde, Alice Notley and Adrienne Rich - their verses offer themselves as antidotes to anxiety and the collapse, seen through scenes of violent conflict, environmental disasters and authoritarian drifts. These images are counterpoised to familiar episodes, scenes of tenderness and intimacy that reveal the personal nature of this work, with which the artist passes down the message of strength and hope offered by poetry and art to her children. In a cathartic ending that quotes Claire Denis’ movie Beau Travail, mother and son go crazy with an enthralling dance in a club. It's emotional and liberating.
2018 – Video, 16:9, Colour, 5.1 surround sound, 14A, 21'
Courtesy of the artist and LUX, London
Beatrice Gibson
°1978, United Kingdom
Beatrice Gibson is a french-british filmmaker based between London and Palermo. Her films are known for their experimental and emotive nature. Exploring the personal and the political and drawing on cult figures from experiment literature and poetry - from Kathy Acker to Gertrude Stein - they are often populated by friends and influences and cite and incorporate co-creative and collaborative processes and ideas. Gibson is twice winner of The Tiger Award for Best Short Film, Rotterdam International Film Festival (2009 and 2013). In 2013 she was shortlisted for The Jarman Award for Artist's film and the 2013–15 Max Mara Art Prize for Women. In 2015 she won the 17th Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel. In 2019 she was the winner of the Images Festival Marian McMahon Akimbo Award for Autobiography and was shortlisted a second time for the 2019 Jarman Award for Artist's film. Recent solo exhibitions include Ordet, Milan; Macro, Rome (2023) and Civico Museo Castelbuono, Sicily (2023), Studio STUK Manhattan, Leuven (2022), Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona (2020), Camden Arts Centre, London, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen Mercer Union, Toronto (2019) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, (2018). Her films have shown at film festivals around the world, including at New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, London Film Festival, Oberhausen Film Festival, Courtisane Film Festival and Punto De Vista International Documentary Film Festival. Gibson's films are distributed by LUX London.