Blackout, for the rioters of 2020-

2 June 2020

After a long night shift at Royal Mail Greenford during the 2020 covid lockdown, the protagonist of this film was trying to set the Zoom backdrop for an online dinner party discussion of blackness at a US museum when he accidentally polarised himself. Together with predominantly GEM cast of disposable ‘Heroes’ he had just contributed to beating the all-time UK record for sorting mail – parcels, garden furniture, fast fashion, knickers, letters to Stephen Frears pitching films about Kathleen Cleaver, you name it. One class was at home in the garden ordering a parasol base, the other was working over-time with a significantly heightened chance of death. In the US, the vanguard of that class was rioting against the systematic state murder of a racialised population. Consequently, the protagonist is burned out on the morning of the Black Out Tuesday* social media shutdown in solidarity with the George Floyd Uprising. Sometimes the situation writes its own script. The rest is hysteresis.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_Tuesday