The Law of Desire is Fascist, 2022
Lou Lou Sainsbury & Kari Rosenfeld
Sound, subtitles, 15:50 mins.
Commissioned and produced by Gasworks, for the solo exhibition Earth is a Deadname.
A sibling sound work to the film descending notes in Earth is a Deadname and narrated by the voice of Jo Mariner. Part confessional, part ramble, part lament, “The Law of Desire is Fascist” complicates gender, desire, and religious narratives in a world of pharmoco-dystopian possibility. A narrative exploration of the history of whippets, a celebration of the potentials of hormone replacement therapy, and a glimpse inside a saint’s body from another world: “Can’t you find another way to eat me? stick your finger into a gaping hole in my ribs—feel warm lung bone, appendix, take your finger out, covered in bile, oil check. Yellowed to the knuckle to believe me.”
“The word ‘form’ is crucial: this work is, at least partly, about how words form us, as trans people whose identities were formed largely by the categorizations of the 20th century medical establishment, but mainly about the aesthetic, social and political possibilities that come with rejecting the forms imposed by outsiders and creating our own...The Law of Desire Is Fascist’s dreams of no longer being ‘trapped in a body’.”
- Juliet Jacques, Frieze Magazine.
Special thanks to CAConrad, Cristina Emmel, Rebecca Jagoe, Willow Killeen, Kris Lock, Snejanka Mihaylova, Azul de Monte, Iarlaith Ni Fheorais, Kate Paul, Rory Pilgrim, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Zachary Schoenhut, Sriwhana Spong and the Transsensuality & Transpoetics working group.
Produced and commissioned by Gasworks as part of Earth is a Deadname, with generous support from the Freelands Foundation.
