My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, And All The Bodily Remains That Ever Were, And Ever Will Be, is a fantastical series of filmic tableaux drawing from various genres ranging from horror to technicolour cinematic dreams, it features four protagonists; two characters called ‘Them who Love’, whose relationship is unclear, they speak of love in a profound and epic, almost spiritual way, ‘The Ghost for Revolution’, the ghost recounts somatic histories of fascism, and ‘The Reader of The Book of Love’ that reads historical quotes from individuals or groups that were involved in non non-violent 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 filmmakers 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 to recognise the emancipatory power of love and pleasure as a catalyst for radical change.

The film features an original score composed by 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, alongside digital animations by Adam Sinclair also Shani’s long term collaborator.

Courtesy of the artist and Gathering, London, co-commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Art Night, Dundee; KM21, The Hage; and POR:TA, Lisbon. Additional support is provided by Southbank Centre, London; Creative Scotland, Edinburgh; the Henry Moore Foundation, Hadham; Luminous Art Foundation, Lisbon; and the Museum of London with support from Arts Council England.

Film duration: 01:02:48

Artist Bio:

Tai Shani’s artistic practice, comprising performance, film, photography, and installation, uses experimental writing as a guiding method. Oscillating between theoretical concepts and visceral details, Shani’s texts attempt to create poetic coordinates in order to cultivate, fragmentary cosmologies of marginalised nonsovereignty.

Taking cues from both mournful and undead histories of reproductive labour, illness and solidarity, her work is invested in recovering feminised aesthetic modes – such as the floral, the trippy or the gothic – in a register of utopian militancy. In this vein, the epic, in both its literary long-form and excessive affect, often shapes Shani’s approach: Her long-term projects work through historical and mythical narratives, such as Christine de Pizan’s allegorical city of women or the social history of psychedelic ergot poisoning. Extending into divergent formats and collaborations.

Shani’s projects examine desire in its (infra-)structural dimension, exploring a realism that materially fantasises against the patriarchal racial capitalist present. Tai Shani is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. Her work has been shown extensively in Britain and internationally.