This is an extract of the video projection for Patient Zero. Patient Zero uses the idea of a press announcement of an epidemic and the relation to “patient zero”. Premiered in Sydney and UK in 2014/15, the performance will be developed further at the MOCA London event.
The starting research for Patient Zero was the book “And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic” by Randy Shilts, an investigative report on the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s. The book introduces the urban legend of the Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas as patient zero. The book looks at the medical, social and political implications of the disease. During an epidemic outbreak, the search is for the origin of the outbreak and to find patient zero.
In recent studies the identity of Dugas as patient zero was a misinterpretation of the letter O. To find answers and evoke a sense of control there is an urge to define and contain knowledge as a comprehensive truth. Peter Berger states that death is an essential feature of the human condition that requires people to develop means of coping with it. As suggested by Chris Shilling it is only in the context of “the body’s inevitable death that we can understand its full social importance”. Self-Identity becomes part of the social constitution in relation to death. As science develops and the “terminal” turns to “chronic” the body becomes a canvas for metaphors of fears, hope and desires.
The piece is structured around the word Epidemic and follows Susan Sontag’s writing about illness and metaphors; a synthesis of imagery is used as a backdrop to “The outbreak declaration”.
https://www.mocalondon.co.uk/robertoekholm.html
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