In her treatise on UK drill, the underground musical sub-genre that is believed to have originated in the neighborhoods and council estates of South London (specifically Brixton) in the early-to-mid 2010s, writer and artist Adèle Oliver pinpoints the cause of its vilification. “UK drill, as the most undeniably antagonistic and irreverent Black music style to break into the British and global mainstream, is deviancy par excellence, a threat to the usual business of whiteness to be snuffed out by the long arm of the law.”1 Against the backdrop of this threat, Oliver reclaims drill’s artistic value by arguing that its criminalization — whether by the British police force or as extended to the popular imaginary — is inherently tied to the history of colonialism and, in the words of sociologist Paul Gilroy, to “the myth of Black criminality.”2 To step into R.I.P. Germain’s exhibition “Anti-Blackness Is Bad, Even The Parts That We Like,” spanning both the ground floor and basement of Cabinet in London, is to be faced with a gnawing question: To what extent is Black culture still a container for the structures, clichés, and norms that mainstream society insists on pinning on it?
At first glance, it would be easy to assume that the artist has gone for a minimalist approach, leaving the gallery nearly empty of objects. In the darkened ground-floor space, western promises (2025) is a storm-drain-cum-trapdoor that has been cut directly into the floor. Its grates, through which a partial, obstructed view of the floor below — where the real action seems to be taking place — can be glimpsed, are apparently consistent with the standard size of peepholes in UK prisons. However, take the elevator down to the basement and what unfolds is an everyday drama of gargantuan proportions. A replica police van lies on its side, its sirens, headlights, and brake lights flashing to the rhythm and sound of drill music. Except the police van is actually a coffin. Get inside, lie down, make yourself comfortable. Once the lid of the casket closes, a small, iPad-size screen installed inches away from your face plays 101 hours of music videos, documentaries, and social media posts arranged in chronological order, a heady cocktail made out of several key ingredients. There are the music videos whose visual content is constructed on the premise of display (of wealth, guns, girls, cars, knives, and drugs), or the YouTube live events, many of them housed on the video platform “Tim & Barry TV” that, since 2006, has been instrumental in sharing underground music culture with a wider audience. There are the blurry, badly framed Snapchat “diss tracks” that often taunt postcode rivals, but that also show the reality of life on these streets. And then there are the news reports of gang-on-gang murder and youth violence delivered in the sensationalist tone of voice that is so beloved of British media. R.I.P. Germain carefully scrapes this content from the internet before it disappears, taken down by police officers who monitor individual accounts for proof of gang-related criminal activity and remove drill music songs and videos from online streaming devices.
Neither an outright critique nor an apology, 101 hour psycho (2025) is an invitation to follow the trail that leads these kids from their communities to near-certain jail time, all via drill and its image culture, or so we are told. It’s a Sisyphean task that is at odds with the direct cause-and-effect that politicians and the media would have us believe. To understand what we’re witnessing entails unpacking the additional effects brought on by institutionalized racism (inherited from colonialist mindsets), the bleeding-out and dismantling of the welfare system and rise of conservative party politics, and the specificity of inner-city urban planning in the UK. But if the intention is to underline the complexity that simmers beneath, it also takes aim at the same logic of consumer capitalism that packages this death-for-sale for mass consumption, before ultimately decimating it, and questions what is expected of Black artists. With a professed interest in challenging behavioral systems and models, R.I.P. Germain forces us as viewers — and consumers — to confront our own deeply embedded assumptions. Among the materials listed for 101 hour psycho are the same bleach and deodorizer used in morgues. As the point is to eradicate any smell, the gallery space is, of course, odorless. Whether we believe what we’re told, or whether this is a red herring that the artist delights in sneaking in right in front of our eyes, it inevitably leads to another consideration: Why oh why do we take such guilty pleasure in this visual and aural onslaught of death? As Germain reminds us in a small text that accompanies the exhibition, “there is *663 years and 8 months* of prison time in this one collage.”
