1667: Not Alive, Just LivingSolo performance at Nottingham Contemporary (Toured at: The Future is Near, Tate Modern, London; Yaby, Madrid.)
2020
Performance documentation. 1667: Not Alive, Just Living, 2020, at Nottingham Contemporary, UK. Featuring Rosa Irwin Clark and Cedric Fauq.
Installation view. 1667: Not Alive, Just Living, 2020. Yaby, Madrid. (Duo exhibition with Rindon Johnson)
Installation view. 1667: Not Alive, Just Living, 2020. Yaby, Madrid. (Duo exhibition with Rindon Johnson)
1667: Not Alive, Just Living is a video installation and performed exorcism to ignite the spirits of Arthur Coga – a late recipient to the 17th century non-human to human blood transfusions of the French physician, Jean-Baptiste Denis, who made numerous attempts to transfer the spirit of the lamb (via blood) into sick human patients to heal them. In ongoing collaboration with musicians Rosa Irwin Clark, Sean B. Goldring and Cédric Fauq, the work provides an open vessel for improvisation and contextual transformation.
Part-post-humanist gothic fiction and part-folk-revival homage; 1667: Not Alive, Just Living chronicles the time-travelling transformation of Arthur Coga during their treatment, speaking from the blood, the lives and the multitude of voices that take host of them. Working from research into histories of queer and ecological activism, British folk music, vampiricism and intersecting forms of land and social toxicity, the performance presents a spiralling fable and swan song for when ‘life’ is determined by religion and capital. As above, so below. The toxic voice of a mysterious substance seeps through the slippages, passing from carrier to carrier, species to species, with unstable and vampiric consequences.
Further Information
Commissioned and produced by Nottingham Contemporary, with kind support from Nottingham Trent University & University of Nottingham, and additional support from Well Projects.