This lecture offers a backward walk through the work and life of the English painter, gardener, writer, and filmmaker Derek Jarman, starting from what, in him, resists the categories of clean, pure, and proper. From the devastated urban landscapes of Jubilee to the ruined England of The Last of England (1987), from the Black Paintings to the tar paintings, from sculptures of wood, flint, and scrap to the first childhood gardens, what then do dirt, waste, toxic matter, tar, scrap, impurity, and insult tell us? Often dismissed, these margins are material, image, garden, narrative, and political utopia. They sketch a fully-fledged ecology, particularly sensitive to forms of ferality that survive the ravages of modernity.
Cy Lecerf Maulpoix lives in Marseille. He is an author, translator, and teacher of critical theory at the city's School of Fine Arts (INSEAMM).