Fri 4 Apr - Sun 11 May 2025
Rowena Harris’s Long-Covid and the Culture of Disbelief was a single-channel film that explored the socio-cultural context of Long-Covid and ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). The film, made over several years, drew on the artist’s personal experience of these related health conditions. It emerged as a film about ME before the pandemic, and then responsively evolved as Long-Covid emerged and took hold in the world and the artist’s body.
The film used captions without an audible voice, to guide us through an examination of the history of ME. Taking us back to the 1950s when the disease was first studied and named, and then into the 1970s when it was reclassified as a psychological condition and linked to a misogynist idea of ‘hysteria’. The film asked us to consider this culture of disbelief in relation to Long-Covid.
Harris used a combination of found footage, CGI, and a soundtrack of rhythmic beeps and clicks, reminiscent of MRI machines and medical equipment to engage in an idea of sickness that slips between the personal, societal and of the film media itself. The film narrates back to us, “a film can look like this and still be sick.”
