LAST THINGS
Stills from Last Things (2023), Courtesy of Deborah Stratman and LUX, London
Last Things: a Screening and Talk with Deborah Stratman and Gabe Beckhurst, was held at APT Gallery on Thursday the 13th of February, at 7 pm.
Offering a unique perspective on evolution and extinction, Deborah Stratman’s Last Things (2023) examines the enduring forms that precede and outlast humanity: minerals and rocks. Oscillating between macrocosms and microcosms, science fact and science fiction, the didactic and the oracular, the film seeks knowledges of existence inscribed across varying scales, modalities, and forms. Traversing the earth’s possible pasts, presents, and futures, Last Things invites critical reflection on humanity’s role within its unfolding histories.
Following the screening, a recorded discussion between Deborah Stratman and art historian Gabe Beckhurst explored mineral forms as containers of deep time: texts waiting to be read, if we are willing to attune ourselves to them. The conversation delved into geology and science fiction as modes of observation that can decentre the human, and considered the productive potential of their enmeshment in creating layered, polyvocal stories about the earth.
Gabe Beckhurst is an art historian and curator who teaches at UCL. Selected curatorial projects include the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022, the co-curated exhibition Currency: Photography Beyond Capture at Deichtorhallen Hamburg–Halle für aktuelle Kunst, 2022, and Dig Where You Stand for the 57th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, 2018–2019. Their writing has been published by LUX, Modern Art Oxford, Copenhagen Contemporary, Another Gaze and Sculpture Journal.
Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work around issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. Her films and artworks have been exhibited and awarded internationally, and have variously addressed freedom, surveillance, public speech, remote sensing, sinkholes, levitation, orthoptera, raptors, comets, street drag racing, tight rope walking, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood and faith.
Screening documentation, Last Things