Leisure, Utopic

2024
Country: UK, Italy
Duration: 2 mins
|23 Seconds
Colour,
Sound: 5.1 Surround Sound
Ratio: 16:9
Available Format/s: DCP / HD Digital File
Original Format: Super 16mm Film

  ,

Indoors, half-light: a young boy is seated by a desk, his mother at his side; he is reading a text printed on a sheet of paper laid out in front of him. Outdoors, sun: the end of a meal in the garden, hands clearing away the plates, another child hiding his joy behind a strange white fur mask making him look like a creature from another world. This brief film is the first in a series of adaptations by Beatrice Gibson of Utopia, a book first published in 1984 by the New York poet Bernadette Mayer. Chapter 4: “The arrangement: of houses and buildings, birth, death, money, schools, dentists, birth control, work, air, remedies, etc.” The boy is reading Bernadette Mayer’s development of this utopian program in the form of an inventory, in an updated version in order to include other arranged patterns: “There is no Instagram, twitter is what birds do…”. The boy is reading, sometimes struggling with the words, his mother helping and guiding him. The desynchronisation of sound and image frees the voices and the faces, magnifying their presence: listening, attention, playfulness, joy. The sensuality of 16mm film acts like a luminous caress, an embrace. Leisure, utopia: the connection of both words enunciates a double credo. 1: Utopia, at least as imagined and written by a non-binary woman poet such as Bernadette Mayer, is a matter of everyday life, a form of life, here and now, one thing after another. 2: Utopia is, or should be, child’s play. Rarely has revolt against the world order been expressed with such a combination of power and simplicity. It goes on for two minutes, seems tiny like a home movie, but it is as vast, intense and beautiful as the world could be. Cyril Neyrat

More works by Beatrice Gibson

We’d love to hear from you

If you would like to speak to a member of our team, please get in touch

Skip to content