Quarantine the Past

‘Shame Resurrection’ is about coming to terms with - and then overcoming - internalised shame. The narrative arc of the song and the scene it soundtracks is a familiar one for many in the LGBT community – a journey of self-acceptance. Authenticity is also central to Andrea’s practice as an artist who is proud to be DIY.

“In DIY artistry there’s truth, it’s innovative and very eclectic but also really defined. You have to think about your identity in everyday life and as an artist,” they said. 

Music is also a “land to play in” where they are able to “fully embrace diversity and achieve a queer identity that isn’t pink-washed”. Andrea is humble about the opportunities that music has given them to explore and express their identity, saying: “There’s still a lot of queer people across the world who don’t feel accepted. There must be more effort going forwards from institutions and artists to help each other and create a sustainable world where everyone can thrive, and where it doesn’t feel like a constant competition.”

But this action needs to have substance, they added. Being a DIY artist has allowed Andrea to shut off some of the noise of the mainstream music industry, to create music that feels more authentic. This approach feeds into Andrea’s wider life as an activist. It’s important to distinguish between the everyday hard work that goes into grassroots activism and the social media graphic that communicates the message.

“We need to place importance on organisations and people who are sometimes less visible but are doing the work rather than just putting the cute stories on Instagram,” they said.  “A shared graphic doesn’t necessarily create change in the long run. It’s great to share the information, but the real stuff happens behind the scenes.”

As a DIY artist and trans activist, Andrea also values the power of collaboration and dialogue. They expressed frustration at the toxicity of debate that has emerged in the LGBT community and in wider society. Discussing the recent tensions between some feminists and the trans movement, as well as the importance for racial parity and diversity to be properly considered within LGBT movements, Andrea stresses the importance of open and considered dialogue. 

“There’s a time for action, of course, but sometimes there’s a time for conversation and a debate. The conversation takes a lot of finessing and a lot of time. You can think you don’t like someone, but you can still work together to make something beautiful,” they explained.

Social media has definitely contributed to a worsening in our ability to have such frank conversations Andrea believes, saying: “We can all be keyboard warriors. Hiding behind a device allows people to be a lot nastier than they would ever be in real life. We’ve lost the ability of talking to each other properly, largely because of social media.”

Andrea comes across as a deep thinker and their thoughts are never far from their music. Having previously spoken about their music having a “hidden political message”, upcoming album ‘Rebel’ will again tackle big issues, albeit with Andrea’s usual pop sensibilities.

“The title track ‘Rebel’ is about climate change in a futuristic, cinematic way,” they said. “It’s my way of saying the planet is dying and it asks you, as a human, do you want to do something about it? It’s also a very me track though; with an iconic chorus and lots of electric guitars!”

The album doesn’t have a central theme but instead explores different moods and ideas. When it comes to playing the new music live, Andrea doesn’t think a year without live music will affect their performance, saying: “I don’t think it’ll change – the stage is my home, but that stage can be my bedroom!” 

However, Andrea is excited by the prospect of the return of live music and expects a “boom” in gigs when the pandemic is finished. As a previous finalist at Pride’s Got Talent, they stressed the importance for the LGBT community to have platforms for people to express themselves again, as well as opportunities for people to be with their communities.

“When you go to the National Gallery and you see these pale white women painted in this overly sexualised way, it presents a view of women which is so narrow-minded,” she says.  “All the way through history, as a queer artist, you see women of colour erased, especially in archives where you don’t see queer art labelled as such. You have to do your own research with your own gaze, to unpick this history.”

In depicting black females, she makes a conscious decision to “represent women who are like me” and, as a black artist, she feels this is more authentic than “someone else speaking on top of another person’s experience”. 

Importantly, all of her models come from the LGBT and black communities. In this representative mode, she is better placed to free the female body from fetishisation and, in doing so, portray the complexity and multifaceted nature of her subjects.

“When I paint people naked, it’s about their relationships with their bodies, sexuality and identity,” she says. “I don’t want them to be flat one-dimensional people; I want them to be portrayed as multifaceted complex interesting beings, and not overly sexualised.”

“There’s so much women have to combat just to live day-to-day, decisions about how you present yourself and conduct your life,” she adds. “I want my figures to be really relaxed, to put all these agendas and decisions to bed, to take up the space to just breathe, and relax in their being.” 

There is a sense of ease in her work and her figures look genuinely comfortable in their own skin. It’s therefore not surprising that she is starting to now concentrate on ideas around the home in a new series called ‘Abode’. 

“My last series, ‘Abode’, is about the home and it’s about how the home is the only safe space for queer people, whether that’s in a relationship or wherever you can curate your own space freely without outside influences,” she says. “This idea of home has become especially important during a period when there’s no public queer spaces. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last year.”

The documentary focuses on Victoria Cruz of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, whose investigation into the case of Martha’s 1992 death is comparable to Yance Ford’s delivery in 2017 true-crime documentary ‘Strong Island’ - quietly diligent but driven by her deep care for her deceased friend. As with many deaths involving black or transgender victims, her attempts to glean information from police officers originally on the case prove unfruitful and obstinate retired cops continually block her. 

“Leave this to the people who should handle it,” one officer tells her, but the film makes it quite obvious that these cops never did their job. They concluded that she died by suicide but did little to investigate Martha being followed by the mafia at the time, whom she’d been protesting against with her old roommate, Randy Wicker.

The mafia were at the time heavily involved in the New York LGBT community, financing much of the city’s bar scene and festivals. Wicker was leading a campaign against what he perceived to be corruption among the organisers behind the Christopher Street Day festival, a campaign Martha supported. She died not long after she was being followed by suspicious men and being sent threats, but the police didn’t investigate, leaving it to a documentary to delve into the mystery thirty years later.

One of the film’s highlights is how it preserves the inherent vitality and charisma of Martha, alongside other prominent transgender activists such as Sylvia Rivera. But while the film goes to great lengths to show Martha’s prevalence in the LGBT community at the time, it doesn’t say much about her youth and life story. 

Some of the most powerful moments instead revolve around the life of Sylvia Rivera and her journey from a youth of intensely passionate activism to despair and grief at the death of her friend. This caused her to descend into alcoholism and homelessness before an eventual restoration and retention of hope before her death in 2002. Her life in the film is given an almost spiritual narrative arc.

The film draws an important parallel with the 2016 trial of James Dixon for the murder of another black transgender woman, Islan Nettles, in 2013. Dixon pled guilty to manslaughter and got 12 years after claiming the ‘panic defence’. Cruz conveys transgender activists’ serious concerns about consistent injustice in cases such as Islan and Martha, and calls on the LGBT+ movement as a whole to do more to support them. 

One activist interviewed in the film says the movement has left transgender people behind since gay marriage was legalised in the US. By remembering Martha and Sylvia, the film is an important call to action for the community as a whole to remember and fight for the T in LGBT+. The film is a great testament to the vital role they played in the movement, even if you do find yourself wanting to know more about Martha.

Many artists also live precariously, from hand to mouth.

“I’m one of those who have fallen in between the cracks,” says Sam Jewitt, an emerging artist who moved back home to Cornwall from London during lockdown. “I’d been self-employed for only two or three months before lockdown, so I wasn’t entitled to either of the government schemes, which has been difficult and partly why I’ve moved back home.”

More established artists will be surviving on cash reserves built through sales before the lockdown. Francisco Rodríguez has savings to tide him over for a short lockdown, but acknowledges that the longer it goes on the more precarious his situation will become.

“Many of my friends are having to deal with paying for their flats, their studios, food and basic things and are struggling,” he says.

Drawing 121 by Francisco Rodríguez. made during lockdown (12.x29, pencil; artwork courtesy of the artist).

“A lot of people are going to be hit hard by this financially,” says Ellie Walker, another London-based artist. “Having the funds to pay for art materials and studio spaces, let alone rent and living costs, is going to be difficult.”

Art continues to be sold online though, through programmes like the Artist Support Pledge and Delphian Gallery’s Lockdown Editions programme.

The Artist Support Pledge encourages people to buy artists’ works but limits the value of a sale to £200. Once an artist makes £1,000 in sales they are asked to buy another artist’s work for £200.

Through Lockdown Editions, the Delphian Gallery promotes one print from a different artist each week for sale and gives 100% of the profits to that artist.

“Lockdown Editions and things like the Artist Support Pledge have been really popular,” says Nick. “There’s been a real banding round together from the artist community, which is quite a heartwarming thing to see.”

Nick JS Thompson from the Delphian Gallery is hard at work in his kitchen (photo credit: Delphian Gallery)

Unsurprisingly galleries and artists have shifted attention to online exhibitions and Instagram.

“There is a lot happening online and it’s amazing to see what people can do,” says Ellie, while Sam called Instagram the “biggest gallery” imaginable, though its size is daunting.

“I’ve always seen it as the perfect platform for an artist but it’s so difficult to promote yourself because of how many people are using it in the same way,” he says. “It’s the biggest gallery and you’re hoping for the right person to come to your corner.”

Benjamin Murphy says lockdown has forced the artworld to take social media more seriously.

“A lot of galleries have tended to neglect social media because they see it as this adolescent bit of admin which they delegate to interns or something to do on their way home, they don’t really treat it as a business tool,” he says. “This current crisis has forced them to acknowledge the power of social media.”

Artists have also had to adapt to working at home and away from their studios. For Sam, lockdown came just as he was getting used to working in his first rented studio in London.

“Getting the studio was that big move and going back to drawing at home has been quite difficult,” he says. “Just two months in a studio has shown me you need a separate space to your flat or house.”

The move from studios to homes has meant a changing of materials and tools too.

“When you’re in the studio, you don’t want to waste your time doing little drawings, you want to use the space that you have,” says Francisco. “But without a studio the only thing I can do is a drawing or watercolor painting.”

“I’ve had to adjust how I usually work,” says Ellie. “I’m now mainly making drawings and small scale works.”

Artist Ellie Walker has had to adjust how she usually works during lockdown (artwork courtesy of the artist)

However, artistic constraints have always been fundamental to the creative process. Staying at home has given artists an opportunity to rethink drawing and their art in general.

Maddalena Zadra, a mixed media artist who moved back home to Italy after her residency at Carpenters’ Wharf Studios in Hackney was halted, says lockdown has given her a chance to “take a break from painting” and think more clearly about “why I use the materials I do and what I’m trying to say thematically.”

“I’m a big believer in self-limitation anyway – it can force you to make works you wouldn’t usually,” says Benjamin. “Artists are having to find ways to adapt, being forced out of their comfort zones, and that’s usually a good conduit to making new and therefore interesting work.”

Whether the pandemic will have an impact on the content of the art being made is yet to be seen. For Francisco, it takes months for feelings to materialise in his work.

“It’s hard to think how the lockdown will affect my practice or how it is changing right now, because I’m still thinking as I was before,” he says. “You have to deal with a process and let it sink in. To feel something, to materialise it, it takes time.”

For Maddalena though, her work is already starting to be influenced by the pandemic.

“At the moment I’m depicting naked ladies and they’re always lonely and waiting” she says. “Everyone is just sitting at home waiting and I’ve been doing lots of works of people being bored.”

Maddalena has company while working at her improvised home studio (photo credit: Maddalena Zadra)

People continue to wait for something approaching normality to return, but it could be a while yet until galleries reopen to pre-lockdown levels.

For now, the artworld is having to be creative online to keep producing art and sales, but the uncertainty lockdown presents is a far more significant constraint than moving from paint to pencil.

You can view more of the artists’ works on instagram:

Maddalena Zadra – @maddalenazadra

Samuel Jewitt – @samuel_jewitt_art

Ellie Walker – @elliewalker

Francisco Rodríguez – @franciscorodriguezpino

Delphian Gallery – @delphiangallery

Partygoers from around the world join a Club Quarantine zoom call (photo credit: Club Quarantine)

Harry Gay, one of the team behind London-based Queer House Party, had a similar experience.

“We had no idea it was going to get this big,” he says. “Throughout the night we’re actually getting 1,500 people dropping in and out. We never thought we would hit numbers like that.”

As nightclubs closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom parties allowed the LGBT nightlife scene to continue.

“It’s been good to socialise with people while social distancing,” says Queer House Party attendee Lee Cooper. “You can have a drink, a bit of a dance, and you don’t have to get a taxi on the way home.”

The initial experience of the Zoom parties can be overwhelming, according to partygoer Zara Mabey.

“You’re overwhelmed when you see people in bondage, dancing in their living room either alone or with others, people in gimp masks, all sorts of things,” she says.

The parties have kept the drag scene going as well, with drag queens performing to webcams. The digital format has even opened up new creative opportunities for them.

“We had this drag performer, called Yovska, who dressed as this mop monster, performing to Christina Aguileira’s ‘Dirty’,” recalls Andrés. “She starts in the laundry room, dips her mop titties into a bucket of water and washes the floor as ‘Dirty’ is playing. She ends up doing a washing machine dance in the shower. It was just wild to watch.”

The nights have provided a vital sense of community for a group of people who depend on the safe spaces of nightclubs.

“You hear a lot of stories about people who are stuck at home who haven’t come out to their families, or they’ve come out and it’s not a very accepting environment,” says Queer House Party attendee Dylan Goveas.

Dan Beaumont, owner of Dalston Superstore, a queer club in London, says, “Queer people draw power from the community, finding like-minded people, friends and chosen family. Isolation can be hard, especially if they have difficult home circumstances or unstable living situations.”

Joe and Jeff enjoy an intimate moment on Zoom (photo credit: Club Quarantine)

Those who have spent lockdown alone have found solace in the new virtual nightlife scene. Zara has been living by herself in London as her housemate went home just before lockdown started and has not been able to return.

“I’ve been alone for the six or seven weeks of lockdown so far,” she says. “Stuff like Queer House Party has made a massive difference. It’s been good to feel as though you have people there.”

For the DJs and promoters, the nights are not without their challenges.

“People need to understand this is a conferencing app which was repurposed as a club,” says Andrés, who says even soundchecks can be extremely stressful.

Andrés and Harry have also had to deal with internet trolls and ‘Zoom bombers’. They now have moderation processes in place to keep the spaces safe for attendees.

“Because we haven’t done it before, we’re learning every week,” says Harry. “We get complaints but we’re a group of problem solvers. By the next Friday we will have sorted it out.”

Poster promoting Queer House Party on Instagram (artwork: FreddeLanka)

For the DJs and promoters, the nights are not without their challenges.

“People need to understand this is a conferencing app which was repurposed as a club,” says Andrés, who says even soundchecks can be extremely stressful.

Andrés and Harry have also had to deal with internet trolls and ‘Zoom bombers’. They now have moderation processes in place to keep the spaces safe for attendees.

“Because we haven’t done it before, we’re learning every week,” says Harry. “We get complaints but we’re a group of problem solvers. By the next Friday we will have sorted it out.”

One of the main takeaways from the parties has been their greater accessibility.

While clubs have become more wheelchair accessible over the years, Zoom party promoters have come to realise a whole range of people have still been excluded – including those who are teetotal, struggle with social anxiety, are hard of hearing, blind, and more.

“We’ve had feedback that these people haven’t felt part of the queer community for so long, but these parties have allowed them to feel like part of it during the lockdown,” Harry says.

The nights have also been attended by people living in countries where queerness is not accepted, with Andrés saying she’s had listeners tune in from Saudi Arabia.

This greater accessibility is something that needs to stick, they both say.

“It’s a shame it took a pandemic for us to realise how accessible parties should be,” says Harry.  “When we’re doing real life parties again we’ll definitely live stream them on similar platforms so that people who can’t make it to the physical space are able to join.”

“There’s no way we would sever that tie because it’s connected a whole audience of people who aren’t able to do the ‘in real life’ moment,” says Andrés.

With lockdown likely to continue impacting the nightlife scene for a while yet, it’s likely virtual clubs will continue to stream on the community’s screens. However, when it does eventually finish, most partygoers will want to return to real life clubs.

“I cannot wait to be with real people and touching them, getting sweaty and hot – it’s a dream,” says Andrés, while Alex Lawless, who promotes a London-based party called Knickerbocker,  says you can’t “replace the live experience, especially having a proper sound system.”

That’s not to say Zoom parties will just stop after lockdown. Promoters and partygoers alike agree they will have a role to play in the post lockdown nightlife scene, in large part due to the greater accessibility they allow.

They will certainly live long in the memory as nights which helped to keep the community connected.

In just two weeks after its initial release, the performance amassed over 30,000 views on YouTube and moved some listeners to tears.

“I think Stanley Kubrick is bang on using the piece for exploring interplanetary worlds and space,” says Dan Bull, the company cellist. “We’re now experiencing the opposite, exploring a very shut-in environment. That has quite a resonance, in a strange way.”

Players didn’t get to say bye to colleagues as their tour was cut short on 17 March, when Opera North cancelled or postponed all live activity till the end of June. Though composer Tobias Ringborg continues to perform in Sweden, where lockdown measures are less severe, most of the company have been furloughed.

“We won’t work until September and that’s the good scenario,” says Lourenço Macedo Sampaio, the viola player. Even then he expects performances to be live streams or to reduced capacity audiences.

Social distancing does not come easily to musicians who need to sit and perform with each other. Like so many of us, the orchestra began to feel restless. Bull and Sampaio pitched Ringborg the idea of a video performance and received his contribution on 20 March.

“We got his footage and that provided us with enough information on how Tobias wanted things to sound and the choice of tempos; then we started constructing the score,” says Sampaio.

Three quarters of the orchestra immediately said they would participate and Bull and Sampaio were delighted to hear many of them had professional recording equipment at home.

Nonetheless, police sirens, boiling kettles and a dog’s barking are just about drowned out in the final mix by Bull. Sampaio managed the logistics while Alex Ramseyer-Bache, from Opera North’s marketing department, crafted the visuals.

Sampaio explains, “The organ had to be done first because you have to tune to an organ. Then we asked the trombones to tune, very carefully saying what the pitch of the organ was and we wanted everyone to tune to the same note.”

The performers were asked to dress in concert dress from the waist up, but were given free reign otherwise. A percussionist’s children wincing as he crashes his symbols, a bassoonist in a wolf mask and a variety of domestic backdrops give the video its distinct personality.

The audio was mixed in little over a week, with the video uploaded to YouTube on 9 April – an impressive feat given the complexity of the piece, Ringborg says.

Also Sprach Zarathustra doesn’t have a clear beat or metric for performers to stick to, so they had to hone in on the initial recordings from Ringborg, the organist and then the brass section. The ebb and flow gives the performance a “sense of nuance”, Bull says, with Sampaio saying it allowed them to add “artistic touches.”

Recording at home was also highly pressured for players used to playing in ensembles.

“It’s quite nerve wracking placing a microphone close to your instrument and recording in isolation,” says Bull. “It’s not a very comfortable experience as you don’t have much to respond to.”

Players were exposed, contributing recordings as solo players rather than in sections, leaving them “naked on the spot”, according to Sampaio. Ringborg, who as the first contributor had no one to conduct apart from a pianist and an imagined orchestra, said it was a “weird experience” but says the result more than made up for this.

“To play to a computer screen or microphone was weird and it wasn’t fulfilling for anyone, but the fulfilling thing is the final result,” he said.

The response so far suggests he is correct, with YouTube commenters repeatedly saying “bravo”, calling it “inspiring” and “wonderful” and often commenting on the anguish of the cymbal player’s children. Ringborg said he has heard from old classmates he hadn’t spoken to in 30 years about it while Sampaio says the most common response he’s had was people saying they had cried.

“As artists, if we can get one person to say that, it means everything,” he says.

Bull says the piece allowed people to connect musically, something which the curtailment of live performance has to a great extent halted. He says the video recording gave people new insights into the orchestra, allowing them to see the performers’ personalities. His auntie’s neighbour even said she preferred the video to a live concert performance.

“The personal stories in the video, like Mark’s children being there, Adam’s mask, you see a bit of our humour,” he says. “In that sense, digital has an advantage because the message is delivered more personally to the audience.”

Sampaio believes the industry could learn from this, arguing opera companies don’t do as much as they could digitally. He uses the example of the Metropolitan Opera – one of the world’s largest orchestras –  which only has 366,000 followers on Instagram, which is small compared to leading performers in other genres. Digital performances like these “break down barriers” he says, offering “different windows to the audience to see us.”

Sampario and Bull are brainstorming new projects for lockdown, but they will only produce another piece if it can recreate the authenticity of the Strauss performance. Nonetheless, orchestras like Opera North will long to return to packed-out concert halls, playing together as a group in the same room.

Sampaio hopes people’s demand for live performance will build up during the lockdown, creating a renewed surge of interest, but there will be challenges, as people will need to be able to afford tickets during what is likely to be a deep economic recession. Ringborg says companies like Opera North will need support from the government.

For now, the Opera North orchestra can be content with having explored the possibilities of digital and broken down barriers with their audience, all within the confines of their homes.

Lee Cooper, 31, a final-year student who is just over a week into a paid assistantship at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton, said it became apparent his cohort would be brought in ahead of time just before the lockdown was announced.

“The university started to talk about ending the course early and there were rumours going around we were going to be asked to step up and work in hospitals, but nothing was confirmed until a couple of weeks after,” he said.

However, Alex Milone, 29, who is also doing a paid assistantship at New Cross, was ready to do his part.

“It was quite scary, and I lost sleep over the virus,” he said. “But when it came to being asked to start a bit early, because we’d only missed five weeks of our final placement, I felt like I was 95 percent of the way there.”

Neither Lee nor Alex were daunted when the call came and both were excited to get to work. They applied for their roles in Wolverhampton, one of the first areas in the country to experience a surge in coronavirus cases.

“It’s a strange time because it’s a national tragedy – it’s terrible all these people are dying,” Alex said. “But at the same time, they were cancelling our exams, which are a big source of stress for all medical students, and they were telling us we could work a bit sooner.”

They are not being asked to work on the front line, with the UK Foundation Council advising final year students are best deployed supporting areas not related to Covid-19. Lee confirms he has been “doing ward rounds, taking blood, inserting cannulas, ordering tests and discharging patients” while Alex has said he’s been doing “whatever is required.”

Birmingham students had been due to take on a volunteer assistantship during this period of their course anyway. The main difference for Alex and Lee is they are now getting paid, something they appreciate after years of financial hardship as students.

To their surprise, the wards they are working in have been quieter than usual due to the sheer number of staff brought in as an “insurance” for the greater peak that had been anticipated.

“They anticipated a very large surge in numbers which thankfully hasn’t quite materialised and the hospitals are coping very well,” Lee said.

This has made the work easier for them as they are not exposed to the pandemic front line and because the public are generally trying to avoid hospitals as much as possible. Lee says it is actually a good time for patients with other conditions to go to hospital, “because you’ll be well cared for” by the numerous staff currently working there.

These young doctors have nonetheless had to deal with the consequences of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Alex has been looking after cancer patients who have also caught the coronavirus and who therefore often bear the worst consequences due to their suppressed immune system.

“It’s a very hard bind you find yourself in – do you treat the cancer or the coronavirus?” he said.

With all the spare doctors now working in the wards, he has also had some free time to talk to coronavirus patients and mentions one in particular who was “just stuck in a room by himself for ten days, with no family to come and visit.”

Because the patients he’s encountered are already suffering from other diseases, coronavirus is “further down their list of priorities.” He admits the experience must be different for younger and generally fitter people who have been struck by the virus.

It is an extraordinary time for them to be beginning their lives as newly qualified doctors. Alex and Lee passed the digital exam the University of Birmingham hastily set at the start of April to conclude their course. They are now just waiting for an ‘e-graduation’ and need to register for a licence to practice with the General Medical Council.

Alex said finishing the course on a computer in his bedroom due to social distancing rules was a strange experience, as normally an exam post-mortem would be conducted over a pint down the pub with friends. However, Lee says the university has dealt with the situation well, given the circumstances. Both agreed they will not miss out on much from losing the final few weeks of their course.

They have been well supported by their friends and family, who have been sending messages of pride and support, though Alex says he feels “a bit like a charlatan” as what he is doing “isn’t exactly mission critical.”

He does hope the pandemic will lead to greater respect being afforded to the NHS, particularly the carers and low skill workers who “don’t get paid anywhere near as much” as the doctors. Lee also said he is glad the organisation as a whole is being recognised.

Although neither are involved in the front line as of yet, their presence in hospitals is an important safeguard should coronavirus cases surge again in the coming weeks or months. If this were to happen, they are both ready to step in wherever necessary, to play their part and help the NHS save lives.