[-empyre-] Contagion

[melinda rackham]

Hi -empyre- 

I believe there will be great things to come out of COVID19 enforced change, and am loving #thevirusisus  #wearethevirus etc

I know people are pilloried for saying that publicly, seen as fool hardy, selfish and insensitive. And there are many experiencing  COVID19 as a severe and life threatening illness, perhaps between 1- 5% will die- the majority being elderly, the already ill, the poor and and the least able to afford health care . But meanwhile the new mantra of flattening the curve has other consequences - women are subjected to increased domestic violence, huge number of people have lost their jobs, income, personal identity and ideals of ‘freedom’ as surveillance is increases.  The ASX tanks, our beaches are closed, people are fined for going outdoors and brothels are being raided. We have friends who live in Sri Lanka with two teenagers who are lockedin and running out of food. No Uber Eats for them. But the reality for a lot of the planet is different - our contagion is fear.

I’m over 60 with a compromised immune system and respiratory vulnerability so Ive moved down to my partners house in a coastal town, while she’s living at my house in the city, deemed an essential worker in mental health. Im lucky, and it xenophobic here. I had to get vouched for as local to buy some winter vegetable seedlings which then appeared from behind the garden centre counter; the supermarket in each small town keeps supplies for locals out the back to make sure city people don’t come here spreading the virus and taking all the toilet paper and cereal. Lucky I eat the gluten free bread and the goats yogurt that few others want. 

Im no stranger to viral infection and no stranger to isolation. In fact I rarely talk about this but -empyre- was gestated in 2001 when I was undergoing 6 months interferon treatment for my HCV.  It was a moral imperative then to cure yourself- to contain infection,  to shield others from my blood. I had done a lot of research before i did the chemo type treatment fascinated with immunosemiotics, network theorists of immunity, contagion, I made the Carrier artwork www.subtle.net/carrier and wrote extensively the eroticisation of Ebola, the horror of homophobic responses and then success of normalisation of HIV campaigns; the queerness and intelligence of the trans virus slipping covertly into host cells to reproduce itself.

I couldn’t leave the house through fatigue  except for medical visits, I was suicidially depressed at points, my hair was falling out. I was struggling with my Phd but needed the stipend to survive, but I had the internet . -empyre- saved me - a project of connection with a global community - a thread reaching out to people who thought about the things I liked to think about ( when I could concentrate)  No-one had to see me or how long it took to write a post. And you know it was a magnificent time. I lived just for the day as I couldn’t really plan ahead. The days I did leave the house were filled with sensorial pleasure. The warm sun on my cheek, the cool autumn breeze. That virus changed my life.

Im finding now an addictive hypervigilence around figure updates as I'm just finishing book which utilises data about unequal power relations in the art world - maybe I will say more on that tomorrow 

More than 1,002,000 people have been diagnosed with the COVID-19 disease worldwide,
The death toll surpassed 51,000 today
1000 people are dying each day in Spain

I am amazed at how the resources of the planet can be switched to finding a cure, artists making masks, gin distilleries now make hand sanitiser. I started playing Plague after it was discussed in last months -empyre- forum (thanks everyone- it was a great month) strategising which nation would be vulnerable to a different sort of viral or bacterial spread- the n egarly waiting till a ship or plane carried my little infectious cluster to another part of the world- very theraputic.!  But what I am amazed at is how this viral fear drives us to action, to bail outs, to unprecedented social lock down, to global collaboration.
 
Maybe because its a solvable thing that we can feel good about in the not unforeseeable future?  No one is throwing money at climate change initiatives, or fighting over having safe drinking water all over the globe , or rushing to ensure everyone on the planet has access to education or to stop child trafficking.

Because there are another set of figures that are staggering:

821 million suffer chronically from hunger around the globe.
91 million die each year from starvation  - 60% are women and girls who have less access to power and food.
25,000 die each day from hunger-

Solvable global hunger.
I want to see the global hunger stats on my feeds every day, I want to see those co2 emission and temperature rise graphs.

Will that ever happen?

Cheers 

Melinda 
in the global south



> On 3 Apr 2020, at 2:32 am, Renate Ferro <rferro at cornell.edu> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Welcome to Week 1
>    Interfacing COVID 19: the technologies of contagion, risk, and contamination
>    Moderated by Renate Ferro, Junting Huang, Tim Murray
> 
> We feature two invited guests this week: long-time -empyre- moderator Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackham our esteemed originator.  Junting Huang, Tim Murray and I will also be chiming in this week as this month's moderators to set up the month.  We have 21 guests from week 2 to 4 but we wanted to keep this week a bit more open to consider who -empyre- is and to give our 2200 plus subscribers an opportunity to post freely. 
> 
> It seems to me that the -empyre- platform might be a refreshing shift for those of us who have been on ZOOM or other virtual interfaces these past few weeks.  -empyre- soft-skinned space was originated in 2002 for exactly the same purposes of networking together a group of artists and technologists who wanted to converse together. Originally the list included a handful of Melinda's close associates and now over 2200 subscribers. All -empyre- subscribers are invited to post freely.  Narrative accounts, literary contributions, theoretical ponderings, links to interesting reading material associated with COVID, tactical strategies, health conscious tips, or survival guides to working and producing are all acceptable. Please let us know how you are doing, how your own work is adapting to the COVID environment, and where you are writing from.  
> 
> We also look forward to hearing from Christine who is in California and Melinda who is in Australia.  The biographies of our moderators and our first two guests are copied below. 
> 
>    Week 1:  April 1st- 7th            
>    Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackham with Renate Ferro, Junting Huang and Tim Murray  
> 
> 
> Moderator’s Biographies: 
> 
>    Renate Ferro’s creative work resides within the areas of emerging technology, new media and culture. Her artistic work has been featured at the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), The Freud Museum (London), The Dorksy Gallery (NY), The Hemispheric Institute and FOMMA (Mexico), and The Janus Pannonius Muzeum (Hungary). Ferro is a Visiting Associate Professor of Art at Cornell University.  She has been on the moderating team of -empyre- soft-skinned space since 2007 and is currently the curatorial moderator. 
> 
>    Junting Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His research interests include Chinese and Taiwanese literature, cinema, and media culture, Chinese diasporic culture in the Caribbean. His dissertation project, “The Noise Decade: Intermedial Impulse in Chinese Sound Recording,” examines an artistic encounter across the Taiwan Strait between the 1990s and 2000s, where an aesthetic and political discourse on “noise” intersected with the convergence of media. At Cornell, he is also the Assistant Curator at the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art.
> 
>    Tim Murray is a curator of new media and contemporary art and a theorist of visual studies and digital culture.  He is Director of the Cornell Council for the Arts, Curator of the Cornell Biennial and the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, and Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Cornell University. A member of the -empyre- moderating team since 2007, his exhibitions include the 2018 Cornell Biennial, “Signal to Code: 50 Years of Media Art in the Goldsen Archive” (2016), CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA with Arthur and Marilouise Kroker (2000-03), and “Contact Zones: The Art of CD-Rom” (1999-2002).  His books include Medium Philosophicum: Thinking Art Electronically (forthcoming in Spanish, 2020) and Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds (2008). 
> 
>    Guest’s Biographies
>    Week 1
> 
>    Christina McPhee’s images move from within a matrix of abstraction, shadowing figures and contingent effects. Her work emulates potential forms of life, in various systems and territories, and in real and imagined ecologies. Her dynamic, performative, physical engagement with drawing, in both her analogue and digital works, is a seduction into surface-skidding calligraphies and mark-making. The tactics of living are in subterfuge, like the dazzle ships of camouflage in war. Lines throw down rope-like bridges, cat’s-cradling figures, or a search for grounding and commons. Cached and clustered, fragments take exception to systems. Color sparks disruptions of scale that reveal allusions to biochemical contraventions, migration, grammars, and marine stress. Her work takes on violence, tragi-comic exuberance, and vitality 
> 
>    Melinda Rackham is an artist, curator and author. Active for over 20 years in the local, national and international media and contemporary arts arena, Melinda has extensive knowledge of art forms emerging in new and traditional technologies such as e-literature; design and making; networked, distributed, augmented and virtual arts.
>    As a pioneering Australian Internet artist intertwining narratives of still and moving image, responsive code, sound and hypertext, Rackham exhibited her award-winning net art sites and virtual worlds at major global festivals and biennales [1995- ]. She established-empyre- one of the world’s leading networked media arts and critical theory forums [2002- ], as part of her PhD in Virtual Reality. Currently Professor Rackham holds an Adjunct Research position in the School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia.    
> 
>    Renate Ferro
>    Curatorial Moderator
>    -empyre- soft-skinned space
> 
>    Visiting Associate Professor
>    Director of Undergraduate Studies
>    Department of Art
>    Tjaden Hall 306
>    rferro at cornell.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu