Beatrice Gibson

Like many of her works, Solo for Rich Man (2014) originated from a collaborative creative process, in this case a workshop that Beatrice Gibson and the cellist-composer Anton Lukoszevieze ran with a group of children. The film takes as its departure point American author William Gaddis’ epic modernist novel JR (1975). An eerily prescient, biting social satire, JR tells the story of a precocious eleven year-old capitalist who, with the unwitting help of his school’s resident composer, inadvertently creates the single greatest virtual empire the world has seen, spun largely from the anonymity of the school’s pay phone. Paralleling the educational environment in which JR unfolds, a large part of Solo for Rich Man is staged in an adventure playground in Shoreditch, East London. The playground, one of several in existence in London, was created in the 1970s in accordance with radical pedagogical ideas concerned with affording children the greatest possible freedom. Together with Lukoszevieze, who also appears in the film, Gibson and George – a participant in the workshop and the film’s central character – conduct a series of individual scenes through which sound and image weave suggested narratives.