Taking different approaches to collaboration and adaptation, the two films in this programme emerge from the meeting point of physical and virtual worlds as they speculate capitalist utopias and dystopias.
Beatrice Gibson’s F for Fibonacci is loosely based on William Gaddi’s modernist novel JR in which an eleven-year-old capitalist creates the world’s greatest virtual empire using his school’s pay phone. Deftly exploring relationships between music and film and education, the film is structured around a conversation between the artist and an eleven-year old boy who created a Minecraft environment for its lead character, Mr Money.
Ben Rivers and Gabriel Abrantes’ collaborative film The Hunchback is a sci-fi adaption of the titular story cycle in the Arabian Nights. Set in a virtual simulation of medieval society, employees of a dystopian tech-company are forced to get back in touch with their feelings by taking on different social roles inside an archaic social order. When a participant playing a hunchback is killed during the simulation, the historical fiction begins to fall apart.
Ben Rivers and Gabriel Abrantes The Hunchback 2016, film still. Courtesy Ben Rivers and Kate MacGarry Gallery
Beatrice Gibson, F for Fibonacci 2014, film still. Courtesy the artist and LUX, London
Beatrice Gibson, F for Fibonacci 2014, film still. Courtesy the artist and LUX, London
Programme
Beatrice Gibson, F for Fibonacci 2014, 35mm and video transferred to DCP, colour, sound, 17 min
Ben Rivers and Gabriel Abrantes, The Hunchback 2016, Super 16mm transferred to HD, colour, sound, 28 min
Discussion with Beatrice Gibson and Ben Rivers, moderated by Maria Palacios Cruz, Deputy Director, LUX, and Programmer, Courtisane Festival
