Provisions
// OBSERVING &
ARCHIVING COVID-19
BREATHING RECYCLED AIR, AND FILLING A CARRIER BAG OF PROVISIONS
Matthew Claudel // Somerville
An introduction from our guest editor
“And now, more than ever, during a moment of shock and crisis and exception, we should be thinking about what new things we are finding in our carrier bags, what we take up, and what we share as we come into contact with others.”
IT’S ALL OVER BUT THE LYING
Lev Bratishenko // Montreal
Resisting the punitive reversal to the Before Times
“Crisis is exhausting, and the transformative power of this one may not survive unless it is sustained by structures beyond the individual, by shared witnessing, and by evidence.”
IN SHARP RELIEF
Madhu Bhushan & Sunanda Bhat // Bangalore
India’s migrant crisis amid the Covid-19 lockdown.
“And by religion, by caste, by fake news: this crisis has further exposed the ubiquitous, complex discrimination embedded throughout Indian society.”
TRANSFORMATIONAL SLOWNESS
Lori Brown // Syracuse
What does it mean to slow down in the 21st century?
“This slowness I find myself cocooned within is an entrance into a feminist ethics of care. As del la Bellacasa highlights, this relational way of being and thinking-with is one where all participate in world making.”
THE GREAT AWARENESS
Andres Colmenares // Barcelona
A 21st century, post-pandemic Europe
“Amal, a daughter of Syrian migrants who took part in the great recovery of Europe after the networked crises of 2020, was getting mentally ready for a new hibernation …”
IT’S TIME TO REDRAW THE WORLD
Jennifer Cutbill // Vancouver
Connection, commitment, and capacity for radical change
“Lately, I can’t help but hear a few lines on repeat, from Regenesis: ‘we have the opportunity, born of crisis, to transform how we inhabit the earth.’ And from Rebecca Solnit: ‘what change do you want to see?’”
SIX FEET APART OR SIX FEET UNDER
Johnny Drain // London
Where does our food come from and what is it worth?
“One of the great problems of modern food systems is that much of the origins of the food we buy have been obfuscated. As a result, consumers have become divorced from the true value of their food, and what is required to produce it.”
SACRED CIVICS
Jayne Engle // Montreal
Valuing what matters in cities
“A sacred civics would have us collectively shape our settlements … Such a shift requires at least three transformations: evolving common good worldviews, lawing together, and building seven-generation cities.”
TIPPY TAPS & SESAME STREET
Lindsay Gladding // Afghanistan / Bangladesh / Haiti / South Sudan
The many ways to fight an outbreak
“… how the development community is working to prevent outbreak in dense urban environments by enabling a simple, intimate, and too often taken for granted act: hand washing.”
STRUCTURAL RACISM ON FULL DISPLAY
Stephen Gray // Boston
Will we finally do something to correct it?
“COVID-19 is a dangerous new reality, spreading indiscriminately and without regard for skin color or cultural background. Yet many Black and brown Americans are dying at disproportionately high rates.”
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
Sascha Hastings // Toronto
Reflections on the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale
“Architects and curators will rise to the challenge of finding new ways of mounting an international exhibition. Certainly the theme of the 2020 Biennale—’How will we live together?’—has become more relevant than ever.”
INDIGENOMICS
Carol Anne Hilton // Vancouver
The deconstruction of normality and the uprising of relational economics
“Indigenomics is a collective response to the systemic de-valuing of Indigenous ways of being and knowing.”
THE ESSENTIAL GENDERED LENS
Gill Matthewson & Nicole Kalms // Melbourne
A post-pandemic necessity for changing gender structure
“During times of crisis, ‘gender-neutral’ approaches to decision making undermine the progress towards gender equality and fail to acknowledge the marked differences in how a crisis affects men and women.”
SOCIAL DISTANCING IN BAKER LAKE
Kaviq Kaluraq // Qamani’tuaq, Baker Lake
A Nunavummiut’s reflection on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on life in Nunavut
“Our children need to become our nurses, our doctors, our scientists, our economists so that we can reduce our dependence and improve our resiliency; they are essential to our future survival in all respects.”
RADICALIZING CARE
Elke Krasny // Vienna
Living with a broken and infected planet
“The Covid-19 crisis has thrown into sharp relief our dependence upon the governing bodies that govern our bodies, our bodily vulnerability, and our bodily interconnectedness …”
INSTITUTIONAL REASON / LIMITATION
Sean McDonald // Washington, DC
The value of public institutions during crisis
“The Covid-19 response has revealed the weaknesses of a political system that has handed power over to technology companies that offer few assurances that they’re acting in the service of any kind of public good.”
A NEW ERA OF SOCIAL IMAGINATION
Hans Ulrich Obrist // London
Asad Raza, Home Cooking
“There seems to be a pessimism today that we can’t influence how the world is organized. Does this crisis mean an end to the way things have been organized in the past?”
SURVEILLANCE AS INFRASTRUCTURE
Matt Shafer // New Haven
A constitutive feature of the stable social environment
“The coronavirus crisis makes this even clearer than it ever was before: ‘Surveillance’ is an inept name for what is better understood as a new kind of infrastructure.”
SITOPIA
Carolyn Steel // London
Food-based lessons from Covid-19
“… it was only when a pandemic stripped supermarket shelves bare that the threat became real for many Westerners, that the illusion of effortless plenty was shattered.”
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE WITH MORE SIGNAL THAN NOISE
Audrey Tang // Taipei
An interview with the Digital Minister of Taiwan
“Joy travels quicker than outrage online ... it is really the only effective way that we found to counter disinformation.”
THE SUSPENDED & THE WEEPING
Xiaowei Wang // Emeryville
Reflections and meditations
“The first few days of shelter-in-place in the Bay Area are full of grief and elation. Action gives some sense of control. I donate money, I volunteer for mutual aid, I give someone immunocompromised a ride to a doctors appointment.”
MUSICAL GATHERINGS
Naomi Woo // Treaty One Territory / Winnipeg
I am an orchestral conductor with no live concerts to prepare for
“Just as urgent as the creation of new work, however, is the opportunity to collect and gather existing work: whether to consume it, to share it, or to store it for later.”
LOCKDOWN LONDON
Henrietta Williams // London
Lockdown London as a state of exception
“A city with no people is one that feels on the edge of a sort of death … The economy falters and collapses without the speed of constant movement.”
MICRO MOVEMENTS AT WORK
Kanika Verma & Shrashtant Patara // New Delhi
The changing livelihood landscape of rural India
“Narratives from the ground have unearthed the wealth of knowledge, experience and collective wisdom of rural communities—small nuggets of hidden resources and relational assets that provide immediate relief to the affected and build long term resilience.”
OUR SEED LIBRARY OF CIVIC INNOVATIONS
Jaclyn Youngblood // Boston
Civic Innovation in Boston
“In all of the darkness and sadness of the global Covid-19 crisis, I have found a glimmer of hope in seeing some of our old civic innovation prototypes find second life: in service of parts of Boston’s pandemic response.”
PLAYING YOUR COLLECTIVE POLITICAL POSITION
Bianca Wylie // Toronto
One more way that we can support each other
“It’s always the same damn thing that terrifies me about this world—our failure of collective political obligation.”
DIALOGUES WITH DUST
Huda Tayob & Sarah de Villiers // Johannesburg
Haunting, displacement, disposable bodies, atmosphere, resonance
“Across time zones, the presentations suggested how we might attend to experiences, exclusions, and invisibilities around the globe in this uncertain time.”
PROVISIONS // Project Aggregator
As part of “Provisions: Collecting & Archiving COVID-19,” we invite you to contribute to our collection of ‘provisions’ by submitting projects, inspirations, and ideas that you have come across or participated in personally over the last months that demonstrate a current provision. We refer to ‘provisions’ in either sense of the word—as provisional ad-hoc things, and as provisions that we might carry forward from this moment of crisis we are collectively experiencing. These might include anything from design developments in response to the medical and health care crisis, to innovative approaches to sharing cultural events and collaborative thinking and programming, to the efforts made by individuals to offer support and care for community members.
This repository will serve as an open, live archive of the present—provisions—that may serve as a useful resource in the future, for reflecting on and learning from the moment.
Illustration Credits:
Carrier Bags by Kim Smith // instagram: @kimsmithstudio // website: kimsmithart.com
Provisional Advertisements by Traumnovelle // instagram: @traumnovelle.eu // website: traumnovelle.eu