Remembering Derek Jarman: Death, Legacy, and Friendship

Abstract

In the twenty years since Derek Jarman died on 19 February 1994 from complications related to AIDS, there have been numerous efforts to remember, commemorate, and celebrate his life and work. In contrast to extensive critical accounts of Jarman’s life and work, the phenomenon of the multi-faceted responses to his death has yet to receive sustained critical consideration. Organised around two central topics—legacy and friendship—this essay analyses key trends and issues that emerge from a consideration of selected texts and events produced in the wake of Jarman’s death, developed with examples primarily from obituaries, articles, interviews, Isaac Julien’s documentary Derek (2008) and related publications, and selected events from Jarman2014. Death signals more than the loss of an individual life. In Jarman’s case, his death indexes shifts in British obituary writing and becomes a means through which to remember the HIV/AIDS crisis from the mid-1980s to early 1990s, queer civil rights activism, and changes in the conditions of experimental filmmaking in the UK. Legacy emerges as never complete but an on-going iterative process. Jarman’s efforts to remember himself, friends, and collaborators are posthumously reciprocated by his friends. A consideration of these acts of friendship illustrates how friendship is structured in relation to death and how friends’ memories of the dead are embedded in the concerns of the living. The range of media used to remember Jarman also shows how memories of the dead are dependent on technology and how shifts in technology over the last twenty years offer increased possibilities for remembering Jarman’s work publicly.