This work combines both sculptural silicone elements and moving image to reimagine how a virus could be re-coded to overcome oppression and anxiety. Made during the global pandemic, through speculative fiction and translucent layers of sound, the work invites viewers into a lyrical, slippery, and wet spell. Ultimately aiming to eradicate capitalism by corrupting data, in light of Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell (2020).

The work was commissioned for ‘Control The Virus Vol 03', curated by DATEAGLE ART and HERVISIONS.

Text for Control the Virus Vol.3 by Francesca Altamura

Trans* artist, curator and poet Anaïs Duplan begins his manifesto, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), with the proclamation: “I am enmeshed in a constellation of oppressions, which we could call the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.” To variant degrees, corruption and malicious discrimination embedded within long standing power structures is felt on a deep visceral level by disenfranchised peoples, as well as by many working within the creative realm. Maintained by a profiteering ethno-elite and in combination with burnout, financial precarity, inherited generational trauma, over-policing, violence and wealth disparity, as well as with the looming threats of climate catastrophe and nuclear annihilation in overlay with a deadly pandemic, the disruption and dissonance surrounding the general population has become, to use Duplan's metaphor, an overwhelming and often debilitating system of injustices. Emboldened by her artistic spirit, London-based artist Corie McGowan has found solace in producing Blue-Light Synthony (2021), which was conceptualized exclusively during the Covid-era. In her ten-minute, forty-five second moving image work, McGowan confronts systematic mistreatment through poetic prose, theatrical masquerading and a slew of floating 3D-renderings which include translucent face masks and viral membranes. The artist intended to “reimagine how viruses can be re-coded, to overcome abuse and anxiety.” In an earnest reckoning, McGowan traverses the dangers posed by living in the unstable and often unsafe conditions that frame contemporary human existence. The artist hauntingly takes on the protagonist character as the “monstrous femme” bynexaggerating normative attributes and traits of the feminine archetype in order to reorient them against societal conditions that have conspired to render so many powerless. Throughout lockdown, McGowan has advocated for free access to vaccinations and improved healthcare provisions in the United Kingdom, alongside protesting the privatization of the medical system at-large. Instead of passive acceptance of the status quo––a disguise too many buy into as immutable reality––we can trust in McGowan’s Blue-Light Synthony to present us with a glimmer into a visionary experience committed to truth, one that “works against [the proverbial] them.”