Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers

Author:Sam Byers [Sam Byers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571360109
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Temporarily rested, empty of shit and no longer hungry, we expanded our agenda outwards from the strictly corporeal. Zelma ramped up my Instagram feed, completing its transformation from corporate puff project to intimate bodily record. There were pictures of us pissing, of encrusted period blood in stiffened knickers, of our mixing faeces on the drain’s blocked grille. She snapped the stack of takeaway containers, a streak of drying sauce along my arm. She also posted images of the space we occupied, its bare concrete walls and barred windows, its stained and chilly floor.

It was not enough, though, merely to document the personal. This was something we both agreed on. Our goal was not the easy thrill of a voyeuristic viewership, the dopamine spike of mindless self-promotion.

‘Everything’s so clean hands now,’ said Zelma. ‘It’s like you can kid yourself you did something just because you saw something. And then you can kid yourself you are something just because people saw you. We can aspire to more than just being seen.’

At the same time, we were wary of blunt ideological statements, manifestos, bullet-pointed aims. We wanted people to arrive at what we were doing in their own way, by their own means, bringing with them their own thoughts and needs. In a moment of inspiration, Zelma appropriated the slogan from our most successful billboard: Release Yourself.

People got it because they were waiting for it. The pictures of toilets and diarrhoea they’d sent to Pict, all of which had been sourced from the web, none of which carried any real sense of risk or exposure, had been too easy. They had spoken of release, implied it, but not quite offered it. Now it was if we had given people permission. In response, our growing number of followers catalogued their own small acts of non-compliance, sending pictures of their mouths and torsos slicked with the residue of messy consumption, unshaven legs and tangled thatches of pubic hair, unkempt armpits, unconcealed acne, chipped and darkening teeth. Meanwhile, the acts of desecration against billboards and adverts continued. Models were adorned with bruises, bags under their eyes, self-injurious wounds. Articles on personal growth were glossed with challenges on points of fact, reworded so that the standard bromides of self-confident positivity became exhortations to rot, swear, spit, and, most pleasingly to me, let yourself go. Hashtags began to sprout and proliferate: #filterthis, #filthyuglyfree.

People naturally wanted to outdo each other. As soon as enough people offered online solidarity, others wanted to go further. They offered money and supplies, asked us what we needed, what they could meaningfully do. Almost out of nowhere, we became a cause.

Zelma set up an online wishlist, made use of an app that allowed you to buy takeaways and booze for friends. Within a few days we had stockpiles of wine and beer, sleeping bags, blankets, bottled water, chocolate. Almost every evening some confused young man bearing pizza, Chinese, fried chicken, or Turkish mezze would tap tentatively at our back door, peering through the gap

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