Seven artistic projects that creatively respond to our relationship with viruses
I am in Venice as I am writing this, just after the Italian government has announced that the whole country is being quarantined, meaning that both entry and exit from the island are forbidden, together with a myriad of other restrictions. This includes closure of universities, museums and many other public institutions, prohibition to organise gatherings and celebrations, such as weddings and funerals, as well as closure of bars and restaurants. The city, which three weeks ago had to have policemen regulating the crowd flow, now seems to be postcard-like, as if people had been photoshopped out. All of this because of the most cited biological entity of the past few weeks - coronavirus or COVID-19 that, at the time of writing, has infected more than 10,000 people in Italy alone.
Globally, reactions to coronavirus have been ranging from justly troubled to sensationalist, especially on a individual level, where the fear has spread at a lighting speed among the members of the human flock, overshadowing common sense and turning into hysteria. It prompted people to ask unbelievable questions, such as whether one can contract coronavirus from objects MADE IN CHINA or Chinese food, which resulted in numerous cases of racism against people of Asian descent. The outbreak has also given a perfect platform for charlatans and evangelists to transmit disinformation within the public, encouraging people to put just about everything in their mouth: from the less harmful garlic to colloidal silver or chlorine dioxide - bleach - making sure that you get a quick (and definite) relief from waiting to contract coronavirus. The overwhelming blend of emotion, ranging between ecstasy of catastrophe (to satisfy the sci-fi nerd in you) to unease escalating into panic, seems to have diminished our cognitive capacity and compromised our agency.
But what are the reasons behind the way we are dealing with the outbreak? And how are they related to our relationship with viruses - the smallest biological entities?
Virus discourse in its current form came to being during the emergence of AIDS in the 1980s - a movement with a momentum of its own, spanning the globe and challenging individual, local and national borders. The idea of an invisible and uncontrollable pathogen, using your body’s metabolism in order to replicate itself and cause illness, was terrifying, and viruses, since then, always carried with themselves enormous negative connotations. They rightfully got a bad rep again with the outbreak of SARS in 2003, Ebola in 2014 and Zika in 2015. Viruses seemed to be supernatural in the way they came from nowhere and yet quickly become everywhere.
In reality, viruses and hosts (such as humans) are engaged in a continuous relationship that has existed throughout the evolution of life as attested by the fact that about 8% of human DNA are left there by ancient viral infections. Viruses are a part of us and a part of our everyday. But they are not part of our conception of the very same notions. The idea of a viral alien agent that enters, lives from and then contaminates your body seems to shatter all the preconceived judgements dividing the world in very clear distinctions, such as us/them, inside/outside and human/non-human, which are usually reinforced at the time of distress.
Wanting to hold on to these (wrong) dichotomies, and the feeling of certainty they provide, is evident in the speech given by the Governor of the Veneto region in Italy, who has pointed out that coronavirus has spread from China because the country’s nationals ‘eat living mice’, pointing to their lack of cleanliness, in contrast to Italian hygiene-oriented mentality.
As much as Luca Zaia would have wanted it to be true, virus does not confine to these notions. The ambivalent virus stands ‘at the border between the ‘living’ and the ‘non-living’, and virtually real’ and serve ‘to challenge almost every dogmatic tenet in our thinking about the logic of life’. It is around and inside each and every one of us. It overrides established categories and blurs or dismisses the boundaries that give humans meaning and structure to their reality, such as what is good and bad. The fear, which accompanies the coronavirus outbreak, on a personal level, is not only anxiety about getting ill but dread about the fact that it is challenging the very being in this world as we know it (or rather choose to know).
What may be useful in these situations to reduce the hysteria and panic that accompanies viral outbreaks, is coming into closer contact with viruses in culture. Viruses may then seem less alien and more already a part of our life fabric, therefore creating an educated and controlled reaction.
These are some of the ways artists approach the idea of encountering viruses.
Meet a virus in a bar
How about having a pint with a virus? John Walter’s A Virus Walks Into A Bar is a short film that encompasses a diverse range of media, including drawing, costume, performance, sound, installation and spatial design. His work addresses a crisis of representation surrounding viruses such as HIV, by bringing new scientific knowledge about viral capsids to the attention of the wider public. Capsids are protein shells contained within viruses that help protect and deliver viruses to host cells during infection. Humorous, endearing and visually entertaining, it gives shape, colour and sound to something that, otherwise, remains invisible and imperceptible. The familiar context of a bar, in turn, makes viruses seem more approachable and quite fun to get to know.
A Virus Walks Into A Bar by John Walter, (c) The Artist, video link
Employ a virus to make you love
What if a virus could infect you with love? Heather Dewey-Hagborg has worked in collaboration with research scientists, to create Lovesick: The Transfection - a custom retrovirus, which infects a human host with a gene that increases the production of oxytocin - a hormone that is implicated in feelings of love, bonding, devotion and empathy. The work is envisioned as an activist intervention, to spread affection and attachment and to combat alienation and hate of the present by consuming this virus orally. Paradoxically, Dewey-Hagborg’s message in Lovesick could be seen as crucial during the current outbreak, which has been a perfect platform for hostility to sprout. It also highlights the immense spectrum of viral possibilities that both literally and metaphorically can induce hate and love, pain and relief.
Lovesick: The Transfection by Heather Dewey-Hagborg, (c) The Artist, video link
Give yourself a virus tattoo
How about a virus-y tattoo? Living Viral Tattoos by Tagny Duff is a research-creation project featuring the process of immunohistochemical staining to visualise infected cells on the surface of human and pig skin and render a blue ‘bruise’ that is perceptible to the human eye. Conceptually, the idea of using the movement of viral cells to create this mark is the focus of artistic expression, where the stain is rendered in the form of a bruise as a reference to current tensions and social anxiety regarding biotechnology and the viral. Using Lentivirus as an artistic medium explores the way we see infections and contagion. Viruses could be reimagined and re-articulated by engaging with viral vectors physically, visibly and directly on your body.
Living Viral Tattoos by Tagny Duff, (c) The Artist, image link
Think about whether you have been contaminated (by rumours)
What else can you be infected with? Contagion by Gina Czarnecki is a large-scale, interactive installation exploring the parallels between biological infection and the spread of information, knowledge, rumour and myth, creating a rich and complex visual system in which visitors’ movements generate and influence the evolving imagery. Large screens hung above head height feature projections of live surveillance footage, trace images of viewers’ movements, ghost images of previous participants, and images illustrating the effect of their ‘infection’ on an individual. Combining this real-time footage with environmental factors, the work addresses attitudes towards surveillance, bio-security and human interaction, whilst encouraging participants to contemplate their own role within the complex system of cause and effect created in the installation. In the current context of coronavirus outbreak, it may be useful to think about the spread of misinformation, which is following a similar pattern to that of contagion, and how to manage it.
Contagion by Gina Czarnecki, (c) The Artist, video link
Learn about viral infections of the past
How does a viral outbreak start? Blast Theory were the first-ever artists-in-residence at the World Health Organisation in Geneva in 2018. Their work A Cluster of 17 Cases is inspired by the stories like the 17 unsuspecting people who stayed on the 9th floor of the hotel on the night of February 21st, 2003 and were subsequently identified as spearheading the SARS virus in Hong Kong. The artistic collective has made three trips in early 2018, to interview key staff at the Strategic Health Operations Centre (“SHOC”), which monitors epidemics and pandemics across the world, exploring how these experts studied the movements of each of the guests in the Metropole Hotel that night. Consisting of a glass vitrine, which housed a scale model of a hotel, visitors were invited to use audio handsets to listen to two accounts of the SARS outbreak, namely, insights into dealing with uncertainty and the challenges of declaring a global alert in the face of limited information. Looking into viral infections of the past and, above all, understanding the way they spread, could be seen as critical in situations such as the one we find ourselves in today, especially in regard to self-monitoring.
A Cluster of 17 Cases by Blast Theory, (c) The Artist, image link
Create an (edible) relationship with a virus
How can we start to see viruses as part of our everyday life? Pei-Ying Lin’s Virophilia is a cookbook written for the 22nd century human in consideration for incorporating the positive usage of viruses into our daily life, highlighting fascinating aspects of viruses that may help to induce a non-biased, intention-free relationship between them and humans. The cookbook was followed by a dinner performance, where the audience was invited to try the dishes with seasonal influenza vaccinations, whilst listening to audio from the future about a shared ecosystem between the two organisms. Works such as this can debunk the idea that all viruses are threats, especially, since new discoveries are starting to reveal beneficial viruses.
Virophilia by Pei-Ying Lin, (c) The Artist, image link
Domesticate your virus
How do you befriend a virus? Caitlin Berrigan’s Viral Confections, as part of a series Sentimental Objects in Attempts to Befriend a Virus, is a personal work that aims to construct a means of friendly approach towards a virus that has infected you. Living with a chronic, virtually incurable virus can lead to a certain identity crisis in which one's occupied body is seen simultaneously as enemy and victim; friend and abuser. Weary of the rhetoric of war and fighting used to describe the illness, the artist wanted to domesticate her untamed virus by offering it comfort. Instead of starvation, she offered it delicacies that have been created in its image, based on the virus's protein structure. The artwork aims to reconstruct our approach towards illness and contamination and encourages to embrace it instead of continuously rejecting it.
Viral Confections by Caitlin Berrigan, (c) ACMSIGGRAPH, image link
What did we learn?
One thing to take away from these artworks is that learning about and engaging with viruses (or anything else that frighten us because of its unfamiliarity, strangeness and difference) can reduce anxiety stemming from not knowing. It can teach us how to approach extremely stressful situations such as the coronavirus outbreak with more preparation and an educated approach. We need to re-evaluate and transform the polarised point of view that still tends to govern our being in the world.
For more information about microorganisms and their relationships to humans read Art focus: How to have a Relationship with your Microbiome.