Move | Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings

Hannah Quinlan (1991) & Rosie Hastings (1991) is a duo based in London. Their work consists of drawings, films and performance which regularly questions queerness and gay culture. They will soon show work at the Whitechapel Gallery and Hayward Gallery in London.

Ten Years was created in 2017. The Title is a reference to the ten-year anniversary of the 2007 financial crash and to the ten years of conservative austerity conducted in the United-Kingdom.

The performance considers the ongoing resilience of the LGBTQ community under the shadow of the Brexit, the dismantling of state infrastructure and a political landscape increasingly turning to the right. Ten years is about the tragic and exhilarating spirit of a community leading a life worth being lived despite difficulties, and it is about daily structural violence.

Ten Years is a work in two parts; a video piece, which presents unseen footage from the repertoire of Gay bars in the UK (UK Gay Bar Directory) - an animated film produced by the artists in 2016 - made of archival images of gay bars in the Uk created over a period of nine months in 2016. Produced in response to the rapid closure of gay bars in the UK during this period, the archive explores the shifting ecology of the LGBT scene in the UK.

The second part of Ten Years features a live performance of the song Total Eclipse of the Heart. Behind the singer a live-stream style video is projected and edited live with footage from the UK Gay Bar Directory. Total Eclipse of the Heart is a Bonnie Tyler song cherished in gay-bars, long upheld as an anthem that speaks of the struggles and joys of the LGBTQ community. In the performance the tragic melodrama and romance of the song creates an intense emotional connection.

Jesse Hultberg was born on Leap-Year Day, 1960 in New York. Queer as a 3-dollar bill. He is the child of the two artists Paul Hammer Hultberg and E. Sky (Ethel Hultberg). He cofounded the music group 3 Teens Kill 4 in 1980 in New York City, with David Wojnarowicz, Brian Butterick and Max Blagg. Together, they made the album No Motive in 1982 and it was released on Dark Entries Records in 2017 and included as a sound installation in the exhibit « History Keeps Me Awake at Night » (a retrospective of David Wojnarowicz) launched at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2018. It continued at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (May 2019) and then in Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (MUDAM) in Luxembourg (October 2019). He founded Wildmonk Records and self-released the Albums Jesse Hultberg (1994) and 20-Years-Old (2015) available online at Bandcamp for free. He also appeared in the films Heroin (1981), Fire in my Belly (1986), and Beautiful People (1987) by David Wojnarowicz. He sang the song YMCA in the film Longtime Companion (1989) by Norman René with the music comedy group Fingerlakes Trio.

Sound producer : Owen Pratt

Camera operator : Rosie Taylor