“The child-like, often homemade appearance and the buoyant, cheerful tone of Beckman’s films are related to a tendency in performance art that delights in the infantile. Stuart Sherman’s play with small objects and verbal images, David Van Tieghem’s musical adventures with various toys, and the polymorphous perverse physicality of Pooh Kaye’s dances are only a few examples. The recent movement of performance art toward music—especially toward the rhythmic, high-energy percussion of punk and new wave music—provides and important context for understanding Beckman;s work, because her films are either structured like songs or use repetitive, child-like incantations (composed with Brooke Halpin) to carry narrative information as well as atmospheric qualities, such as the excitement of a repeating percussive line…”
