Digital Poetics 2.12 Funereal Rites by Adam Gallagher
‘Funereal rites’ is an intimate totality whose constituent parts hold lives of people caught in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic as the latest iteration of racial capitalist crisis and degradation.
The image at the top is a digitally-corrupted image that distinctly went blue originally of two young NHS nurses at work with scribbled placards. The image in the middle is of RCN nurses protesting the migrant surcharge hike (2018); it has been affected to make it more material, wooden and somehow painterly. It's in dialogue with the text Adam has written – an auction ebay-etsy description of a colonial Santo for sale, carved in the Philippines in the 18th century.
The sound-piece consists of four parts. The first part is a short bastardized Derrida quote on Chris Hani. The second part is a list of the 'first' female doctors in South America followed by a list of Filipino nurses lost during Covid to the state. The third part is a text about Panama Al Brown who made history by becoming boxing's first Latin American world champion. The final part and outro is a sound recording made of Adam, Ruth and Adam’s mother in the garden, in Streatham where Adam grew up. The readings are done by a very close friend of Adam’s, Javon Bennett, himself a baker but once upon a time a HCA at The Royal London Hospital.
Appreciation and credit to Javon Bennett for his reading, Isabelita Bride and Ruth Angel Edwards for the audio, Dan West for the image and Jennifer Brewer for prompting recording.
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Adam Gallagher is an artist and writer based in London who works through performance, publishing, sculpture and radio. He self-publishes a series of pamphlets called ‘E.A.R.F’. Commissioned writing includes 'Helpful Tips/Call me when you see this!!!': Happy Hypocrite 11, ‘Tuna Temperature’:The Tube #3 - Losing, 'What Can Robert do next? Where is Robert going?' Piper Keys (2018):‘Special Category Status’ and ‘Trust’:The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Post-Psychoanalysis event (2018) and ‘Extra Judicial Killing’ and ‘What did I do to deserve this?’:Montez Press, Interjection Calendar (2017).
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