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Thank you, Renate and Tim, for inviting me to share some thoughts on the pandemic, COVID, the crisis, my life and work as COVID jolts all that I used to think and do into some new unknown. I appreciate the opportunity to explore the personal, the professional,
and the political here, as I rarely write in the first person or about myself. I am struck by how the pandemic has entangled the public and private, both of which are now much more permeable with Zooms into our homes and fears of what public actually means
now or will mean moving forward. </div>
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I play piano, which gives me sustenance, solace, and an elsewhere to go to, especially now. I have been working on some sonatas, picking my way through different moods and tones and movements, mistakes abound but it is the details of the notes that pull me
in, tonalities, textures,dynamics, mechanics, melodies, harmonies, dissonances, major and minor keys, the circle fiths. the more I play, the more these chords and lines become part of my hands and heart. It is an elsewhere I relish because it is it not a
screen, it is not a flat surface, and it is about my hands putting something into space even in all my fumblings and slowness.</div>
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So my postings for this week on Empyre will be in 5 movements, each with a different speed. I do this because I find shelter-in-place is not a narrative of Buddhist meditation and reading, or even productivity. It jumps between feelings of satisfaction to make
dinner with what we have and grade papers, and then absolute horror of death, an insufficient public health system, the divides between those who think of this as a welcome respite from work and those whose work puts them on the front lines wondering if they
will live. Everything and every emotion is entwined and snarled and changes. So today, I start with Movement 1, Allegro</div>
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MOVEMENT 1 Allegro</div>
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52 minutes of calling, redialing, calling again, asking could you get a phone to her? Is is possible for her to hear my voice? Just for a minute? I got my mother on the phone in her skilled nursing facility, she could not understand me, her hearing aid was
not in, she kept saying I HEAR NOTHING NOT A THING I HEAR NOTHING NOT A THING.</div>
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On March 12, the Governor of the State of New York issued a degree that locked down all the skilled nursing facilities aka nursing homes in a former era in the state. In Washington state, the death tolls in one nursing home mounted, with the news showing body
bags leaving.</div>
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I thought I had the day off from visiting my mother Alice. For the last five years since I moved her to Ithaca from Houston, I have visited her almost every day. This is not Catholic guilt or familialism. She has dementia, significant psychiatric challenges,
can't walk, mostly does not eat, and has been hearing impaired her entire life, legally deaf. I visited her daily so she would have human contact, some touching that was not medical, and some "talk" as she does better in person with slow talking and enunciation,
as she can read lips like most people who are deaf or hearing impaired. She is 96 years old, the daughter of a coal miner and union activist who emigrated her from Scotland.</div>
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It was our Spring break at Ithaca College. I had settled in for a day --a luxurious day--of staying at home, reading and writing, without the pressures to get in my Volvo to visit. But that call took my autonomy away. The governor was closing the nursing
homes and assisted living facilities across the entire state. Lockdown.</div>
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I rushed over to Oak Hill Manor on Hudson Street. The parking lot had cars double parked. Families poured out of cars in groups, carrying stuffed animals, plants, flowers, blouses, Oreo cookies. I found the last spot overlooking an elementary school playground.</div>
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I entered the nursing home and was surrounded by two aides. One took my temperature. It was fine. The other squirted hand sanitizer into my hands and said she had to watch me do it. Families were streaming in with children, with cousins, with husbands, wives,
brothers, sisters. I was the only person there alone. </div>
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I saw a nurse training aides in how to properly wash their hands: get the thumbs, do the back of the hand, do the finger tips, suds up, 20 seconds, two rounds of Happy Birthday. The aide did not meet the standard and had to start over. </div>
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I saw three different rooms where staff were interviewing young women of color to be aides. The doors were open, no privacy, just interviews. I saw two young women with tatoos, one with purple hair, the other with braids, filling out job applications in the
visiting room where residents often sat in their wheelchairs talking to their family members and looking out at the trees. </div>
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Nurses, doctors, aides, staff members, family members, job applicants, receptionists swarmed and buzzed. Nursing homes are not places of energy, but places of quiet, sadness, isolation. Thiss was different. Allegro. Speedy. At a clip. </div>
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I passed the temperature test and the hand sanitizing test, signed in, and then walked down the hall to my mother's shared room. Almost every room was filled with visitors, more than I have ever seen there before. Hardly anyone visits nursing homes, they
are lonely places with people whose minds are living in other fragmented worlds. I heard crying, I heard moaning, I heard screaming,, I heard questions asked over and over, I heard the word WHY WHY WHY WHY spurting out of a room. These were the residents,
most of whom experiencing some form of cognitive impairment, trying to process all the commotion, all the people. For them, the coronavirus was not something they could understand.</div>
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I went to see my mother. She was laying in bed. She kept repeating: what is going to happen to me, what is going to happen to me? I had decided given her executive function impairments to not explain she would be in lockdown and that I did not know how long
it would be until I could see her. I turned on CNN, hoping that the news of the coronavirus might give her a hint, but she could not follow it. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME, WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME?</div>
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An aide who speaks often with me gave me her mobile number on the sly. I left. I went to my car, sat there, looking at the playground, and wondered when I would see my mother again. I had given her a long hug, thinking she could die before I would see her
again. The nurse told me that they were hoping that if end of life were near, one family member in full medical suiting could sit with the person. Now, I see that will not be possible. Sitting in my car, I could not feel and I could not think. Only one horror
rippled through me: how will she hear and who will take care of getting her nanotechnology hearing aids in so she can be a little bit in the world and not live totally in the shards of her memory?</div>
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The social worker called me a few hours later. Said the Governor was shutting down. It would be a month. But I knew that was not true. One of the nurses, whose name I do not even know, pulled me aside in a little alcove. She whispered: I've been talking to
a friend in Washington, out west. And a friend who works for the state. This is going to be longer than a month. Long. Not sure how long. Steal yourself. </div>
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I send my mother simple letters every day, an epistolary meditation about the daffodils, the split pea soup I am making, my son out in Santa Monica who now paints and bakes bread when not doing his work in the tech industry.</div>
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I find myself angered, furious, militant, disgusted by people who tell me it is horrifying my mother is in lockdown and I can't see her, how they could not handle that, how they are so glad their parents live in their own homes and can use Face Time and Zoom.
They tell me, it won't be that bad, have her use her mobile for Face Time, have her install Zoom. My mother is in an advancement state of cognitive and psychiatric decline and can not dial a phone nor use one. There is no technological digital solution to
her inability to communicate with me. She needs to see my lips and read them. Or she is living in a world of her brains shards and shreds, a disconnected place with no ballast or anchor.</div>
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A relative of sorts shares how happy she is her parents are home and can use a phone to see grandchildren and greatchildren with special apps. She found my story "heartbreaking." It is not. It is the real of COVID, where there are no emotion, there is only
living in the moment, and knowing if you do not get a call, COVID has not entered the nursing home and my mother is still alive. I find her apps and her stories of images rendered digitally offensive, pounding down my heart, not supportive at any level.</div>
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In six weeks, I have spoken to my mother for a total of 8 minute three times. Each call has taken three days to make happen. My feminist politics will not let me get angry. The nurses and aids and staff are overworked, scared of COVID, without sufficient PPE,
dealing with the immmobilzed and cognitively impaired, the most high risk population. On one of my attempts, I asked the nurse how she was doing. She said, I need to be honest. I'm doing badly. It's so intense here. There are not enough workers and aids and
nurses as every patient needs to be totally isolated. We need more PPE. We wash our hands constantly. We don't know where COVID is but we know if it comes, there will be death.</div>
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If I hear another person suggest Face Time, Zoom, Skype, lap tops, iPads, mobile phones to me as a way to "help" my mother, I will lash out. For someone with dementia and deafness, any of these devices are challenging, impossible, and all of these devices
require staff to take time out of caregiving to work it, and then explain it. I have noticed that so many in this crisis see technology--particularly digital technology--as a salvation, a vaccine against the horrors of COVID and isolation, a displacement of
their existential fears of the unknown and death into a machine, a keyboard, a surface. Noone asks me how I am doing, what I am feeling, how does one deal with lockdown of a deaf and demented 96 year old who can't understand what is happening inthe world.
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME? WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME? I remain happy with the thought that my partner and I took her to Boatyard Grill the Tuesday before for her birthday. We shared a fish and asparaus, and she blew out a candle on a cake. We texted
Renate and Tim as we read Cornell went to distance learning.</div>
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Six days later, reading endless praise for al the new technology we faculty in the Roy H. Park School of Communications could use to teach our classes in a "normal" way to maintain "continuity," I can't take it anymore. SUBITO. FORTISSIMO. I lash out: technofetishism
will only be a work speed, and pretend. Nothing will be normal. We are in crisis, and death.</div>
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I thank my mother for teaching me this, that digital technology is a chimera of connection, that it can't solve this problem of my mother's isolation. Yet nano technology hearing aids gave her some way into the world, but not fully. When I blast my salvo out
to my colleagues in the Park School arming themselves with various new programs, I thank my mother whose lifelong deafness and question WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME gave me the insight that technofetishism will not get us through this crisis,
nor give us calm, nor give us connection, nor give us touch, or lips to read.</div>
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All of this unfurled in allegro, a steady pace, with forward propulsion, confusion, loss, unknowns, mourning.</div>
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Patty Zimmermann</div>
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<div style="font-family:Tahoma; font-size:13px">Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.<br>
Professor of Screen Studies<br>
Roy H. Park School of Communication<br>
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival<br>
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Ithaca College<br>
953 Danby Road<br>
Ithaca, New York 14850 USA<br>
<br>
http://faculty.ithaca.edu:83/patty/<br>
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff<br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer@brunel.ac.uk><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, April 26, 2020 2:08 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [-empyre-] [empyre] COVID and circulation workers</font>
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<div class="PlainText">This message originated from outside the Ithaca College email system.<br>
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----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
dear Annie McClanahan, dear all<br>
<br>
thank you for your wonderful posting on circulations and circulation work(ers), it was inspiring, with its critical edges and its drawing attention<br>
to the logistics business too, the circulation management. (I had never much thought about it until last year when working on a exhibition & book project on<br>
new materialism/dance, and a writer (Moritz Frischkorn) submitted a study about "The Choreography of Objects: Logistics vs Entanglement", and it made me think of Fred Moten's work as well as Donna Haraway's recent "Unruhig bleiben" (Staying with the trouble)).<br>
<br>
In your last paragraph you speak of taking things into our hands -- could you elaborate how you imagine it?<br>
<br>
>>We could carefully map and relentlessly survey the networks that connect us all, smoothing and equalize some of these flows and stopping entirely the movement of others. We could refuse to see our personal safety as our zero-sum due and instead see that inevitable,
unintentional connection—transmission, even—is another name for solidarity...>><br>
<br>
I want to mention Moten's book on the undercommons here, as I have not fully grasped what it is after (the no-thingness he writes about), and I wonder<br>
how artistic action or a choreo-logistics might be shaped, as "repairs" for our current condition if such repairs are at all possible and it all remains broken; I found this from the first chapter (an intro by Jack Halberstam) of Moten's 'Undercommons':<br>
<br>
"It ends with love, exchange, fellowship. It ends as it begins, in motion,<br>
in between various modes of being and belonging, and on the way to<br>
new economies of giving, taking, being with and for and it ends with<br>
a ride ... on the way to another place altogether. Surprising,<br>
perhaps, after we have engaged dispossession, debt, dislocation<br>
and violence. But not surprising when you have understood that<br>
the projects of 'fugitive planning and black study' are mostly about<br>
reaching out to find connection; they are about making common<br>
cause with the brokenness of being, a brokenness, I would venture to<br>
say, that is also blackness, that remains blackness, and will, despite all,<br>
remain broken because this book is not a prescription for repair."<br>
<br>
I read this today after a friend from Switzerland sent me a poetic piece on bats, by<br>
Fanzun and Weidmann: "How Likely Is It to Be a Bat?" which examines shrinking collectives<br>
of the socially distanced, in the rear view mirror of John Rawls's "Schleier des Nichwissens"/ veil of ignorance, and<br>
his research student's Thomas Nagel's reflections on being a bat:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdelirium-magazin.ch%2Fsection%2Fcategory%2Fhome%2Fhow-likely-is-it-to-be-a-bat&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpatty%40ithaca.edu%7C75e6cc1d88c042b71d6b08d7ea0dc01a%7Cfa1ac8f65e5448579f0b4aa422c09689%7C0%7C0%7C637235217121312954&amp;sdata=nyJwlmOD2Q%2F%2Fckq4KbUjkBmh4OdYRcC3I%2ByYJ6Z2gg8%3D&amp;reserved=0">https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdelirium-magazin.ch%2Fsection%2Fcategory%2Fhome%2Fhow-likely-is-it-to-be-a-bat&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpatty%40ithaca.edu%7C75e6cc1d88c042b71d6b08d7ea0dc01a%7Cfa1ac8f65e5448579f0b4aa422c09689%7C0%7C0%7C637235217121312954&amp;sdata=nyJwlmOD2Q%2F%2Fckq4KbUjkBmh4OdYRcC3I%2ByYJ6Z2gg8%3D&amp;reserved=0</a><br>
<br>
it's in German and makes for brilliant reading, at least for me it also connected so well with Annie McClanahan's commentaries on Marx, the labor of hands, machinic organisms, outsourcing of/and consciousnesses (..."the kind of theory that would give us an
alibi for our own unknowing: that would reject the idea that we see these conditions clearly..")<br>
<br>
with regards<br>
Johannes Birringer<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
________________________________________<br>
From: Annie Mcclanahan <annie.mcc@uci.edu><br>
Sent: 24 April 2020 18:35<br>
-<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br>
<a href="https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fempyre.library.cornell.edu%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpatty%40ithaca.edu%7C75e6cc1d88c042b71d6b08d7ea0dc01a%7Cfa1ac8f65e5448579f0b4aa422c09689%7C0%7C0%7C637235217121312954&amp;sdata=Stshah4Cks1D6OchTW4S0GSgGfr%2B1rqOV%2FMSX7r3c8Y%3D&amp;reserved=0">https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fempyre.library.cornell.edu%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpatty%40ithaca.edu%7C75e6cc1d88c042b71d6b08d7ea0dc01a%7Cfa1ac8f65e5448579f0b4aa422c09689%7C0%7C0%7C637235217121312954&amp;sdata=Stshah4Cks1D6OchTW4S0GSgGfr%2B1rqOV%2FMSX7r3c8Y%3D&amp;reserved=0</a><br>
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