CORRUPTING CARE at Dublin Fringe Festival

CORRUPTING CARE is a live show from multidisciplinary Next Generation 2022 artist David McGovern that aims to disrupt and expand how we view both medical care and self-care. It celebrates the role of the internet in creating communities and places of care. Four performers, including Croí Glan’s Linda Fearon, will share their bold, alternative care acts through spoken word, film, dance and sound design. The stories bring speculation, imagination and dark humour to the world of care.

The work poses disruptive questions around care, that move away from the soft and passive and instead toward the provocative and fringe. Can a dating app be a site of care? How do you regain your appetite for sex and pleasure after a long period of illness? Can we create new healthcare and medical environments that change how we see going to the doctor?

Informed by 60+ hours of testimony, the show stages real lived experiences of the resilience and imagination of queer, disabled, sex work and many ‘othered’ voices in caring for themselves and each other. To the backdrop of unaffordable cities and dated healthcare systems, we find ourselves forming our own care practices that work for us. CORRUPTING CARE acknowledges the hardship involved in some acts of keeping well.

The show’s foundation is HARDCARE (www.hardcare.net) a participatory artwork that aims to create new ways of talking about sickness, health and care. It is informed by the artist’s own experience of heart disease. The socially engaged project hopes to build commonality among those with niche experiences of care, and work towards individuals being empowered and self-determined within their care experiences. It is a radical reimagining of how we view looking after ourselves and each other.

Taking place as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2022 on Sunday 18 September: https://www.fringefest.com/festival/whats-on/corrupting-care