#106: Lucy Beech

About

Selected works:

Reproductive Exile (2018, 4K video with 5.1 surround sound, 30 min) explores techniques of bodily control and entangled human and non-human bodily processes connected to reproductive technologies. From anonymous urine donors providing hormones purified from their bodily waste; to intended parents; their brokers and surrogate hosts, in Reproductive Exile the protagonist comes to terms with how her journey impacts and is impacted by an invisible community of different bodies.

Pharmakon (2016, 4K video with 5.1 surround sound, 20 min) focuses on health anxiety and self diagnosis in an era of mass communication whilst exploring the conflation between care and entrepreneurialism. The founder of the video’s central female community is part advocate for the network of displaced sufferers in search of legitimation and part entrepreneur in the business of the body.

Alongside her video works Lucy Beech will also show a selection of performance works staged for camera; produced with her long time collaborator Edward Thomasson. Often involving the live construction of sound, these performances are largely choreographic and consider what happens when language fails as a mode of communication and people are left to use their bodies collectively as a means of transformation. In Public Relations (2016, HD video with sound, 10 min) a male performer invites the other men to play out a fantasy of vulnerability; enacting violence on his body without touching it. 7 Year Itch (2015, 4 min) presents a group of performers working in pairs to collectively construct the sound-scape of a sex scene, conceived as a sex therapy workshop the couples build the imagined scene through movement and amplified sound.