Bibbe Hansen

Bibbe Hansen is an American performance artist, musician, actress, and writer. The daughter of Fluxus artist Al Hansen, she was associated with the 1960s New York avant-garde and the underground film scene surrounding Pop artist Andy Warhol's Factory. As a Warhol superstar, she appeared in the 1965 films Prison and Restaurant. In the 1960s, she performed with the pop group The Whippets and released the single "Go Go Go With Ringo," a tribute to Ringo Starr and the Beatles.

In later years, Hansen became active in the Los Angeles punk and underground arts scenes, co-operating the Troy Café and performing with Vaginal Davis in the satirical punk band Black Fag. She is also known as the mother of singer and artist Beck.

Life and career Hansen's parents were Bohemian Jewish poet Audrey Ostlin Hansen and Fluxus artist Al Hansen. Her stepfather was Jimmy Shapiro.

Her father was an early pioneer of the Happenings movement, which emerged in the late 1950s after he, along with Allan Kaprow, Dick Higgins, and several other artists, attended an influential experimental composition class taught by John Cage at the New School for Social Research in 1958.

Hansen began her professional acting career as a child with the Saranac Lake Summer Theater in upstate New York.

In 1964, Hansen recorded an album for Laurie Records with friends Jan Kerouac and Charlotte Rosenthal as members of the band the Whippets. The group released the single "Go Go Go With Ringo" on Josie Records, a Pop Art tribute to Ringo Starr and the Beatles.

Hansen had a troubled childhood, recalling: "My mother was, by turns, an amphetamine addict and a heroin addict, and had some very troubling alliances with men."

That same year, Hansen also appeared in Warhol's Restaurant and participated in two of his Screen Tests. Warhol selected her second Screen test for his conceptual series The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women. Odyssey Theater production of The Threepenny Opera directed by Ron Sossi.

Around 1976, her father moved to Los Angeles and introduced her to the emerging punk rock scene. "That's classic Al," Hansen later recalled.

In 1999, Hansen appeared in the short film The White to Be Angry.

In 2025, she published her book of poetry, Factory Poems, reflecting on her time at Warhol's Silver Factory.