NOTES ON CORONAVIRUS: THE EARLY DAYS
In post apocalyptic visions of the future we reflect what we already know about disaster. One of the common threats to safety and stability in many parts of the world has been war. Design in the face of war becomes concerned with camouflage, secrecy, concealment, defence and protection - solid and impenetrable.
But Coronaviris is not a nuclear threat, it’s not shooting at us. It’s silent and invisible and very infectious. It comes to us from our own friends and neighbours. It can out strategise us.
Like in a conventional war, there are winners and losers. There are the privileged who are able to isolate and protect themselves and those who cannot, left exposed or overlooked. This disease is not affecting us all in the same ways. Every day is different too. What I thought I understood and knew yesterday, is not the same as what I have learned and know today.
There are issues being raised for which no one is prepared and designers need to decide how they will adjust their practice. There is an increased amount of content being consumed and most of it is light hearted, humourous and relevant to our daily experience. It seems to be about connection and making sense of strangeness.
When this all started, I asked myself, of all of the items we could be hoarding, why toilet paper? It’s not a digestive disease.. We weren’t even in lockdown at that stage in Providence, Rhode Island. Not immediately obvious connection to Maslow’s hierarchy. It seemed to me that with no real experience to draw on in preparing for what might come, our thoughts went to the most basic and everyday of consumer products in the hope of preserving some normality and dignity. Then as time went by and by then safe inside our homes, our thoughts turned to other needs more familiar to Maslow - sex toys and food. Exercise equipment, skincare, making bread and looking for connections online.
For weeks, I have been archiving content being made during this time from a range of sources. I even made some myself and in collaboration.
What I have found most interesting about these creations was that I was making reference to daily, everyday gestures and tasks that I felt I was losing control over. I can only be near or hug the people that I live with, and even then I have in the back of my mind that everytime we leave the house we might bring home to each other more than we intend. In the street we dodge around each other and even cross to the other side of the road to avoid other families. We have stopped going to the big supermarket and into the centre of town to shop, staying close to home and the smaller family owned corner store in the next street. We wait to shop at big stores until late when there are few people around. The only way to buy clothes, shoes and books is online. We try to say hello to each other in the street but it feels wrong to stop and talk. We can’t play sports, dance in groups or go to weddings, parties or funerals.
This got me thinking—if this is in fact the end of the way we live, as we know it. Then what will it be like for the babies being born now, maybe a generation that doesn’t know what social interactivity is?
In oral histories, we pass down stories to explain how certain things came into existence and to remember things that used to be. For instance explaining how a tree or a geographical feature came to be to someone seeing one for the first time.
What if the handshake no longer exists post Coronavirus? Or greeting gestures in general? How do we explain the origins of the elbow bump? Will these changes in greetings impact our intercultural and interpersonal relationships? If the french can’t kiss on both cheeks? How does that change their experience? Will we commemorate lost gestures when inventing new ones? Will museums record our experience through an archive of Tik Tok videos? (When people began to “cheers”/clink glasses, it was to swap the contents of your glass into another person's glass as a way to ensure you weren’t being poisoned. We still clink our glasses today, without that context.)
Something to think about..