So from now in London this confusing Brexit govt tells us we can at last visit other people’s homes, but only in their garden and keep 2m away. And only 1 house per day. Strictly no mixing people from different houses in 1 day.
And also if we have to, we are allowed to use the toilet of the house that we visit. These are the rules but who will police all this?
They say they have already fined 14,000 people for rule breaking but when there is a big demonstration like this week for George Floyd, all the rules disappear as everyone comes out.
And people in the government are breaking the rules and then give excuses on television – like going 60 miles for an eye test. It’s a very strange confusing time.
We are allowed to travel unlimited distance to go to exercise but can not use the trains unless we have an essential reason. Risky if you get stopped.
So a lot of people are driving – near where I live the traffic can be more than 1 mile, just one person in a car about 40 times their body weight to move around. With all the pollution.
I am thinking of going to the sea next week (Brighton) to get some clean air – if the rules will change again, to stay with friends. (Siraj Izhar, London)
Wow, its difficult to be imaginative when a prisoner of the State.
I wrote a couple of essays on my blog on corona which got a lot of responses – they are also in other places.
Playing around with some ideas but nothing concrete. My time clock is too messed up. I sleep a lot.
I take a regular walk in the city and the Thames; the City is eerie, the homeless are struggling in particular as everyone has disappeared. There is a big gap here between what is said in the media and what happens in practice.
Anyhow to see the empty deserted monuments of Capital is very poetic
but of course the money extraction from around the world is still going on.
Want to make a work at some point….
When its low tide, I go on the Thames.
The geese and other birds keep me sane.
How long for….
Wish I could escape. I think Berlin would have been easier than London. (Siraj Izhar, London)
During the time of the big lockdown here in Vienna I made the recordings for the short film “Spring Will Not Be Televised“. The focus of these recordings is on TV-Sets in private living spaces that are visible from the streets outside. During nightly walks through the city I aimed to find as many of these TV-Sets as possible and to film the programs that were televised. In the cutting process I later tried to form a narrative out of the collected footage in a very free and associative way. The result, rather automatically than intended, turned into a media-based portrait of our present-day world.
What particularly interests me in this project is the fact that it is built on two visual levels.
The first level is the one of the televised image. It enables both, a view outside onto what´s going on in the world but also inside, onto the interests and media habits of the TV viewer. In times of isolation the wish for escapism and the dependency from digital media become visible more than usual. In this situation, media not just functions for purposes of entertainment but as one of the only sources for information about the world outside.
The second visual level is the environment the TV-Set is placed in. Here I tried to portray the ways of how information spreads through media. The film starts with images of the big TV-stations and media houses. Therefor I filmed inside the newsrooms from the streets outside. Starting at these epicenters of information the camera the pans to the media consumers. As the perspective gets closer and closer into the private spaces the images on the TV-Sets become clearer. Finally you have to feeling to stand inside the living rooms of the TV viewers.
For me personally the film shows an atmospheric picture of a society in state of emergency. At the same time I think that the pictures indicate how society has maneuvered itself into this situation by it´s doubtful ways of acing and dealing with the world. (Michael Heindl, Wien)
the good weather and my well-behaved adherence to the rule not to go mountaineering because of the pandemic is driving me crazy.
As compensation I paint large-format alpine landscapes with African groups of people.
In Photoshop I mount a giant pocket watch in a bizarre rock gate.
In a moment I will call Robert to see if we can go climbing on a hidden rock.
Robert says: not so. (Wolfgang Aichner, München)
At this a certain fragility and calmness as the singers feel the tremors of the fluorescent lights beating underneath their bodies.
I feel it has a sense of being on hold and poised in a delicate balance. The fluorescents are themselves at the end of their lives so there is space of intermittent and precarious behaviours going on but with a sense of rebirth too which I feel all adds up to a reflection on current times…(William Mackrell, London)
rethinking human relations also. For me, nothing really changed. I’m stuck at my desk and in my studio while seing nobody except my son and girl … half time. (Yann Le Crouhennec, Die, Frankreich)
The pangolin is maby the host of the corona virus.
(Surekha, Bangalore)
I was calling to Sweden today and my friend reported that her mother is concerned about the police state in Czech Republic, while she is concerned about that the Swedish state is doing less to protect people. Write now she is reading Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann.
(Matthias Roth, Berlin)
Poem for Rod
ticking
art or poetry
we are
our part
life itself
the human world
the end
I am not your danger
(Jürgen Olbich, Kassel)
Actually, everything is quite bickering, everyone is allowed out, but only in twos, or if from a household with several, everything is up to except groceries, drugstores, apotecs, gas stations and „Spätis“. In Bavaria, only those people who live together or are „life partners“, whatever that means, are allowed to go out together. That is really terrible, with over 50 percent of single households a very stupid decision, I feel sorry for the poor people.
Everyone more or less adheres to these commandments and the rules of distance, about 2 meters apart. From time to time there is already tension, some older people become almost hysterical, they have very much internalized that the old have less chance to survive, while the young remain quite safe, especially the high death rates from Italy are worrying.
Not too much has changed for me, I work mostly from home anyway, but I can no longer go out to eat or celebrate, nor organize parties or openings myself, nor can I travel. Now I do sports via Youtube instructions at home with my girlfriend, not bad at all, outside in the yard I start to do tests for a new project for interventions in public space, because I can’t come to my friends and workshop in the Uckermark.
Economically I’m doing reasonably well, I have a fixed income for this year, which hasn’t broken away, but I’m very worried about the whole cultural structure, but also about the small-scale economic life, if we have bad luck, we’ll end up in front of international chains and a mail order company… (Uwe Jonas, 28 March, Berlin)