Covidism

A Movement is Born: Covidism 

April 27, 2037

A strange psychological change occurs when fiction becomes fact--even to the writer of the fiction. It makes the novel more journalistic; Reporting is vastly different because you're an "embed" as a kind of war correspondent. In 2020, everyone thought they were experiencing what might be read in a dystopian novel, which gave life a surrealistic dream-like quality.

In the 6-9 months after the outbreak, little work was being shown as all the galleries were shuttered. Early on in 2020, artists were unsure what kind of art to make. A group of artists working in quarantine were Karborn, John Fettering, and Anton Townes. The popular send-up at the time was Edward Hopper, whose signature style of empty streets and people gazing out of windows in their quasi house arrests. “Social Distancing” was the meme of the day, and its metaphor began to seep into the canvas. Anywhere people gathered, such as waiting in line at the few place that were open, such as grocery stores, there was colored tape six feet on-center on the sidewalks—sometimes red or blue Xs and yellow stripes as a kind of caution tape for the ground.

In late 2020, just before the election, a few galleries opened, one, in particular, Rastone Gallery, run by Brazilian lithium empire heiress Ramona A. Stone. The group exhibition was extremely nostalgic of Dada, particularly the Schwitters-like collages and the Rauschenberg-esque Combines, but with the inclusion of reflective warning tape and other material seen on the streets at the time. Some were still doing glitch art and New Aesthetic pieces, popular on the Old Facebook platform circa 2010. These two forms are both evergreen and prognostic as they both dealt with dystopian decay. Like the old SciFi writers in history they were insulated from grim realities with indulgences in creature comforts, and they now became the war corespondents of the art world.

By 2022, Covidism became named as a movement, as by that point artists had accumulated lots of work. But the after-effects of the coronavirus pandemic had already caused a paradigm shift in the art world. Purely digital art was back in. In retrospect, it was similar to the art world in the 1930s-- futurist and propagandistic, but full of aesthetic value, and like before, not merely "reportage" of COVID-19.

In an email 4/22/2020 to John Fettering, Karborn said:

“I'm seeing more questions about life post-virus. In spiritual time it doesn't matter at all. It's interesting in the sense that we need philosophical frameworks now rather than simply working and making...You can always find cunning ways to "movmentize" work later on.  Many artists are simply recording life as a way to keep making, but people are in a weird mental state, waiting for the quarantine to lift while watching the grim news reports.

There is an interesting effect of fear and stress on the desire to record it. I have experienced this in my own life when certain things were just too distressing to write in my diary. In the current moment, the thing is to document the COVID-19 pandemic. I have taken a few images but have no desire to take more. If there is anything to create in the current moment it is a mix of pleasant memories and nostalgia tempered by the subtext of "The Now."

Fettering replied on 4/23:

"This is why acts of cruelty and mass genocide can happen. People simply don't want to look, let alone perpetuate the memory by documenting it, and so they make things they made before, or make happy pictures to relieve the stresses. It reminds me of photos taken while my father was stationed in Europe in WWII--all about the R&R, not the typical scenes of war. He wasn't in battle, so those kinds of images just weren't there. They are a candy floss as respite from the background stress of war. My dad never wanted to talk about the war, let alone view even the happiest of images because the subtext of even being involved in it evoked painful memories.

From an article I recently read about the current Gerhard Richter exhibition, on hold because of the lockdown:

"The opposing view, voiced by Jean-Luc Godard and others, was that documents are our strongest defense against amnesia, and that images can be powerful agents of imaginative reconstruction. (Whether or not imagination should have a role here is the heart of the conflict.)"

Therefore we should document, just as dystopian SciFi writers should continue fleshing out their ideas hoping they don't come to pass. In the meantime, keep pushing back against the idea that we should be making "trending" political artwork and keep honing our painting skills because there is hope in those gestures amid the darkness of our current time."