Resurrect Me as a Parasite, 2025
authored as mosquito girlfriend (Gabi Dao & Lou Lou Sainsbury)
Scanned 16mm film, 2K video. 9:52 mins.
A vampiric trio facilitates the transition of a new host across a former limestone quarry and the sacred mountain grotto of Mary Magdalene, troubling the binaries of life, death, gender and parasitism. Monuments to female saints become poses of living queer memory, as skeletal remains are transformed with embellishments. A mosquito draws blood with its proboscis and hormones are drawn using a syringe, as the remnants of an extracted zone is now overgrown with lifeforms.
Filmed on 16mm, the work unfolds within the disused ENCI marl quarry in Sint Pietersberg, the Netherlands, and the Magdalene cave of Sainte-Baume Mountain in southern France; a site where Mary Magdalene lived in isolation for the last 30 years of her life following her exile. The film takes inspiration from Langston Hughes poem ‘Tired’ whose beckoning words call to “cut the world in two,” reinterpreting this gesture within an age of extinction. Embracing tropes of eco-horror and exploitation cinema, a sensorial score by John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari drives us through the erotic desire paths of the vampiric; where water, blood, hormones and stone remain transformative, viral, abundant and alive. The film features performance by Max Lester, James Parnell & Ailo Ribas.
Produced by mosquito girlfriend, a film, video and research project by Gabi Dao & Lou Lou Sainsbury, exploring the political and historical implications of parasitology in relation to colonialism, reproduction and trans, queer and more-than-human life.
Made with generous support from Amarte Fund, Mondriaan Fund, K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation, and donors who wish to remain anonymous.