107 Days and Counting...

Abstract

In this essay, I reflect on my experience of social/physical distancing in Brazil, one of the current epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic. I draw upon Achille Mbembe and Denise Ferreira da Silva to explore how necropolitics underpins the Brazilian Government’s response to the crisis, framed by a colonial and racialised logic that privileges whiteness and trivialises the deaths of Brazilians. I conclude the essay by making reference to my track 107 jorna (107 days), written on 1 July (and premiered online by the Glasgow-based Lights Out Listening Group), where I combine Sicilian speech and electronic noise in order to articulate my own astonishment, impatience and indignation with the current situation.

Keywords

• Pandemic
• Brazil
• Italy
• death
• racialisation
• musical composition