Throughout four chapters, Isolation (ep.1), Control (ep.2), Heroes (ep.3), and Future (ep.4), we listen to different voices from around the world and reflect on the first global lockdown. As confinement measures were imposed and replicated in every space worldwide, alternative narratives to that moment in history had become crucial to understand the different realities caused by the same virus.
Immunity and contagion were terms that defined how we must live our lives, and revealed essences of our relations with one another. During the pandemic they reflected more than ever our fears and desires.
Social Contagion is a sonic journey across different landscapes and perspectives that explores how home confinement is imagined and experienced, based on the personal experience of a range of people around the world: spoken texts, interviews, whatsapp audio’s and audio archives are interwoven to make sense of the than current events.
Contributions by and with the voices of:
Anarchic voice, Antonio Lazcano, Antonio Monroy & Surya Son, Daniela Baldelli, Dasom Suh, Elsa Louise Manceaux, Emily Pierskalla, Erik T, Erik Tlaseca, Fake Prophet (a.k.a Mario Morales), Georgina Faun, Georgina Faun (read by Maria Evoli), Gloria Kiconco, Goredealerbaby, HKZ, Isaac Contreras,Jazael Olguín Zapata, Jeroen Jongeleen, Jonas Staal, Joshua Thies, Laura Anderson Barbata, Malgorzata Misniakiewicz, Margarita Kuleva, Maria Galindo, María Evoli, Markus Gabriel, Nexhmie Qerimi (read by Claudia Schouten), Norma Angelica, Omar Aguilar Ruedas, Paul B. Preciado (read by Claudia Schouten), Sameena van der Mijden, Sandro Brito, Sanchez Ramos, Sarjon Azouz, Selfis666, Stefania Acevedo, The Ghost of H.K.Z., Theo Prodromidis.
With support from the Mondriaan Fund.
Isolation
Expect to hear sounds from the middle of a tianguis in Mexico City; an unexpected lover arriving from the airport; interviews interrupted by home-bound kids; and the call of a bat inside a cave when it finds itself in the middle of a imaginary party.
Chapter one Isolation is guided by bats, the so-called first source for COVID-19. As fear of contagion continues, a large part of the coronavirus debate and media scrutiny orientates around blame. Who is responsible for the spread of the virus — animals or human migratory patterns? Governments or individual lack of responsibility? Rather than falling down that particular rabbit hole, we instead retreat to the bat's cave, where we allow our winged friends to lead us through the debate, to think and share, and to explore our hidden fears and desires.
Control
A loud warning emerges within the clouds, a drone speaks to the citizens: “Return to your home, the virus is among the people. If you go out, you kill. If you go out, you will die.”
It's 2022, politicians say we have won the war against the virus. Some people gossip about a group of people who escaped the paranoia of pandemia, and live in an opaque city where they kiss and touch each other wildly. Everywhere, the worldwide pandemic has established a new hygienic regime and total state control comes with new ways of surveillance. The walls of prisons all around the world start to topple down as new forms of domination are designed and sold.
Expect to hear the 12 prophecies for control and chaos, a zapping and scrolling just to find there is ONLY the never-ending stream of news about the virus, a letter from someone who is more afraid of the police and of losing their house than the pandemic. The memory of some parents not panicked by covid19. Also, anarchic notes on the refusal of the return to normality, a call for ongoing self-organization. Strings from a distant place, a call from the authorities to amputate infected hands and an unstable call for freedom, rebellion and union.
The big storm is coming after the end of the pandemic, it comes on full speed, it will be on a drone above our heads, inside our pockets, in every wall, in every sound, but there will always be a way out.
Heroes
Who did not stop working during quarantine?
Who could not?
SCENARIO: a striking open score about labour, time, and struggle (working title)
[Scene 1] character_1 is still sleeping in his bed.
[Interior] apartment house. inside bedroom. breaking of dawn. alarm sounds.
[character_1 wakes up] sun is starting to shine and light is coming through the window, some sirens sound at the back. character_1 turns on the Radio.
Narrator: "The “essential worker” class: the hero of the crisis, those who will keep the system running while risking their lives, while many of them live in scarcity and poor labor conditions. On the other side, those who clap from confinement at 7pm for the “heroes”, clapping as a way to distance not only socially, but as a complete different class of worker."
Nurse: "We health workers are not heroes. We should not become martyrs at work. We are professionals. We need personal protective equipment so that we can maintain health while saving lives. We need adequate staffing and well-equipped health systems. We need strong public funding for our sector."
Grocery store clerk: "There is no doubt that we as humanity and planet earth are at the dawn of the unknown, where imagination pushes us into the search of common sense to be found again."
CHOIR:
“Workless, work all, produce what is necessary, redistribute everything”
“Not to return to normal, but to get out of this world!”
Amazon delivery guy: "Haven´t you heard about the so called cognitive workers insisting on taking advantage of automatisation as an open path for liberating humans while proposing to tax robot owners? Make them pay for our debts? Did you see the video where a Greek comrade questions the heroic structure of society while proposing the choir to resist official narratives?"
A computer voice: "an artist who is a mother puts the spotlight on how kids have overproduced work during quarantine."
Future
Consumption, dreams and parties.
Three stories placed in the year 2022. Three characters find themselves living within the “new normality”. Everything has changed in a deep way, it’s been so many years since their life has been mediated by the so-called “third wave of the pandemic”, suddenly, their reality turns upside down. Three fictions about the future in our present.
Freedom. Contact. Laughter. Care. Shopping. Panopticon. Digital memberships. Dancing. “The flow”. Black Screens. Keyboards. Homeoffice. Touching. The empire of the digital. Surveillance. Today. Caress with others. Contact is revolutionary. Distances are always present. AntiSocialDistance. I want to become part of the others. The Flow. The Whole. The Others. I am a multiplicity of the others.
A civilization that once made factories, now has placed one into every possible room in the planet. Time, work and life are one. Telework means only working in ones room 24/7, no one to see but still feeling connected to everyone. Social interactions are deeply engineered illusions. Still, there will always be rebels everywhere, every day there are people who decide to turn their desire for something different into something tangible, something that might not set the world on fire entirely, but, as someone once said, from a little spark might burst a flame.
The future is now, whether we know it or not, most of us are already engaged in either resisting -or creating- a new other reality.