Second Wave

‘Second Wave’ (2020), with Veronica Diesen, premiere at The Second Chapter, one week group show at 3,14 Bergen, curated by Gitte Saetre, 20-27 August 2020, https://www.kunsthall314.art/the-second-chapter

Benedict Seymour & Veronica Disen present Second Wave (One Nation Under A Grave) (2020). Initiating a collaborative UK-Norway artistic research project with Veronica Diesen, the film is an autopsy of ‘Brexit’ and an elegy for the subsequent electoral struggle against the far-right. It begins with the defeat of Corbyn, moves back to explore the referendum as a (suspect, cinematic) device, and ends with a premonition of the plague politics of the Tory government to come. Against the dark (Conservative) blue, and with help from Derek Jarman’s 1991 film of the same hue, the film finds hope in the experience of collective discussion and analysis, whether in the streets or the rural hinterland. A historical materialist tarot reading may be more use than the maps and diagrams of electoral forecasting. Will the death of Labour bring about the birth of a ‘collective walker’, an exodus from politics as we have known it? One Nation Under A Grave is both a wake and a rave, a graveside eulogy and a death wish – from below. The project has been supported by Bergen Kommune and the Norwegian Arts Council. With technical support from Bek.