'The lead of the philosophers, named the lead on the air, contains the shining white dove which is called the salt of the metals', thus resounds the enigmatic saying of the alchemist Johannes Grasseus, which introduces the videotape Prelude. Following on, you see close-up, computer processed images in pale colours, of fishes swimming slowly around and around. Concurrent with this movement you hear clattering and piping electronic tones and sound structures that appear to come from the very depths. This unnerving underwater-universe is not stable: the image fluctuates, trembles, splits up and becomes increasingly abstract, more difficult to ‘read’. In a flash you see the fishes suddenly fly, you discern a sky... Finally, you can’t make out exactly what it…is you are seeing! Eureka! For it is precisely the complexity and the ambiguity of the moving (video)image, which, qua internal and graphic design, differs so fundamentally, in reality, from our experience and perception on a sensory level, that interests Beekman. An interest which he analyses, exploits and makes manifest, partly through poetic philosophy and partly along scientific pathways. Read more...