[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre_

[Stewart Auyash]

Thank you, Paul, for your always interesting insights along the borders of
art and science. I still have fond memories of your visit to Ithaca College
a few years ago. Arthur and Bishnu, your posts moved me to think about the
virus and our place in the world in a different way.

Right now, I am managing many sides of life from my privilege in higher ed
while also believing that this a great time to teach about public health.
Aside from teaching, there's the reality of my colleagues and long time
friends facing the prospect of lost their jobs or being furloughed at the
college. And as chair, I am intimately involved in recruiting accepted
students to attend in Ithaca College in the fall.  But I feel a bit like
the pied piper and asking myself 'what am I leading these students to do
exactly?' Where will we all be and what will it be like? Do I want to be in
a classroom sharing space with 30 students. Has the Covid paranoia infected
my mind even though the virus has not infected my body, yet?

When will this be over and when will be back to normal? Everyone is asking
me and all my public health colleagues some version of this question. Part
I is easy to answer: I don't know. Part II is more complicated but less
uncertain. When this is over nearly everything will be different.
Everything. As someone who consumes, but is no scholar of, the history of
public health, we know that global events like Covid 19 will change most
people's lives forever, especially now and in recent history. I grew up the
child of Depression era parents and grandparents. A fair comparison, I
think, given their global reach and levels of unemployment. My parents
ingrained in their children a level of frugality, fear of economic
collapse, and suspicions of capitalism (my parents are no Marxists),  that
I cannot escape even today. Play Covid 19 forward and think, for example,
about the impacts of physical distancing and social isolation (social
distancing was never the appropriate term) that children are exposed to
now. What kinds of relationships will they engage in the future when
they're told that they can't sit next to their friends no less hug them? We
already know that our mental health is being affected but what impact will
the alarming rate of unemployment and excess death have on that when this
is over?

I have to stop here. I'm starting to freak myself out. I promise to be more
positive with my next post.
Thanks all,
-Stewart



On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 1:58 PM Vanouse, Paul <vanouse at buffalo.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hello Junting,
>
> Ah, yes, thank you for connecting this! I saw Parasite in a small theater
> here in Buffalo about a week before quarantine began, but I hadn’t yet
> processed it fully. I think I was so struck by the genre crossing and
> irreverence toward familiar (perhaps colonial) plot structures that I
> hadn’t unpacked the "poor people’s" scent thread throughout the work. It
> does update/reframe the 19th Century notion of urban masses living in
> stinky dense low areas of the cities--in this case, literally underground
> and below the water-level.
>
> In another light …if anyone is putting together an anthology on smell and
> disease  through present, I suppose one should also add supersensers, like
> Joy Milne from Scotland who actually detected her husband’s Parkinson’s
> disease and many others through their scent.
>
> Paul
>
> > On Apr 16, 2020, at 11:12 AM, Junting Huang <jh2358 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> >
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> > I am particularly struck by Paul’s comment on the profound relationship
> between odor and disease, as well as its historical ties to classism and
> racism during the Victorian era. Many would perhaps recall a recurring
> motif in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019), the Kim family’s “poor man's
> smell.”
> >
> > Parasite is not its original title, but this new title has so forcefully
> crystalized the idea that the poor is often characterized as
> disease-ridden. In the beginning of the film, the family are bathed in the
> stinky smoke from the public fumigation because they can’t afford
> disinfectant to kill stinky bugs. Bong also talked about the chemical
> substance that Korean police in the past used to disperse protesters: “It
> was a very traumatic smell. It’s impossible to describe: nauseating,
> stinging, hot … It’s strange, sometimes I smell it in my dreams.”
> >
> > Junting
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20200419/4dd12cce/attachment.html>