Pandemics are planetary specters that haunt our more-than-human world. The “specter” of planetary destruction in the Anthropocene remains “the event of our time” (Ruddick 2015, 1115). Calling the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) another planetary specter heightens the serious material nature…
Emerging from Lockdown: “Moral pioneering” in Everyday Practices for Women in Europe and North America (#WitnessingCorona)
As Europe and North America begin to ease lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, this essay looks broadly at how people, especially women, assess and justify risk and the morality of social contact, and the actions they take as…
Whose Space is this? A Multispecies Auto-Ethnography of Viral-Human Negotiations in the Contact Zone (#WitnessingCorona)
“Like faces pressed against a window, they leer at me menacingly: their very nearness is what menaces” (Timothy Morton 2013). Co-existing with SARS-CoV-2 is in times of the COVID-19 pandemic without any alternative. I live in the city…
„In Isolation“ (Mai 2020), Dokumentation über die Zeit nach dem COVID-19 Lockdown (#WitnessingCorona)
Die Idee zu dem Film „In Isolation“ ist während der Zeit nach dem Corona-Lockdown im März 2020 entstanden. Die damit verbundene kollektive Isolation, die uns alle in Österreich in Distanz zueinander und zur Außenwelt setzte, hat mich…
COVID-19 Secrecy in Indonesia: Between Economy and the Government’s Empty Pride (#WitnessingCorona)
Angela Merkel’s remark on 11 March 2020 that up to 70 percent of Germany’s population could contract COVID-19 was brutal. Being highlighted in various Indonesian news outlets, I can imagine how her words baffled their audience. Still, as someone…
What COVID-19 Reveals about Borders and Citizenship: Europe’s Migrants on Their Way Back Home (#WitnessingCorona)
Travel restrictions became a global response to combat the spread of COVID-19. According to an analysis from April 2020 at least 93 percent of the global population live in countries with coronavirus-related travel restrictions. Nearly half of that proportion…