Prednisone (film, 17min 15sec), 2023. Installed at the Mike Kelley Homestead, 2024.
In 1950, Arthur Nobile used the bacteria Corynebacterium simplex to transform cortisone into prednisone. I took 200 milligrams of it while traveling during the spring of 2023 to fight a rash that bloomed across my arms, torso, and legs.
Prednisone is a collaged film that explores how bodies translate anxiety into physical infections. It considers “narrative medicine” as a tool for healing psychosomatic pain and places it in conversation with Western medicine, which has often suppressed people’s—often queer people’s—ability to identify the roots of their wounds. It combines footage of landscapes with rotating horizon lines, pictures of a stress rash that appeared on my body in 2023, and my own childhood ephemera.
The film discusses the Best Little Boy In the World syndrome, coined in 1977 by Andrew Tobias that argues queer children hide the shame of their sexuality by being perfect at everything they do, which often leads to an anxious attachment to image and perception. Its score is a collection of four new audio works that distort, slow, and layer the traditional Gaelic song Dúlamán and Scottish-based Ossian’s Rory Dall's Sister's Lament (1984).
Filmed and shot by Daniel Sharp
Narrated by Daniel Sharp
Scored by Daniel Sharp
