Watch a screening of Tai Shani’s My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, And All The Bodily Remains That Ever Were, And Ever Will Be, with its score performed live.
The film features an original score composed by Tai Shani’s long-term collaborator Maxwell Sterling and Richard Fearless (Death in Vegas) which was developed to incorporate gamelan instruments during the Southbank Centre Studio residency.
The film also includes digital animations by Adam Sinclair, another of Shani’s long-term collaborators.
The piece is a fantastical series of filmic tableaux, drawing on horror, among other genres, and technicolour cinematic dreams.
It features four protagonists. Two are called Them who Love, a pair whose relationship is at once erotic and galactic. They speak of love in a profound and epic, almost spiritual way.
Another is The Ghost for Revolution. The ghost recounts somatic histories of fascism. And the last is The Reader of the Book of Love. They read historical quotes from individuals or groups that were involved in direct action.
The film is inspired by various sources: classic works of literature including Destroy, She Said by Marguerite Duras, the writing of scholars including Jackie Wang and works by film-makers such as Jacques Rivette.
The film is a poetic meditation on various historical resistance movements and groups, the spiritual dimensions of anti-supremacism, intersectional queer feminism, communism and revolutionary thinking. It’s a recognition of the emancipatory power of love and pleasure as a catalyst for radical change.
This is a co-commission for Art Night, CAC Cincinnati, KM21 and POR:TA. With additional support from Luminous Foundation.
It’s developed in collaboration with the Southbank Centre, and supported using public funding by Creative Scotland, the Henry Moore Foundation, and Museum of London with support from Arts Council England.
