Pandemic: a six-handed study

Abstract

The present six-handed study is a journey into some of our pandemic emotions through photography. It is the result of a collective investigation and some improvisation in a Lisboan interior. The subject of this collective research is the impact of the pandemic on affects and the body. Body and affects are seen here as concepts and emotions deeply affected by the social and planetary transformations generated by the long-lasting and deadly acceleration of something called neoliberal capitalism, of which the ongoing pandemic is only one of the latest outcomes, together with the uncertainties and further vulnerabilities generated by the omen of a recurrent viral catastrophe. This is the frame within which the three authors of the study gave shape to their investigation, being among those who live in Europe as fully-fledged citizens and having relatively benefited till now from the distance the Global North has established from social and environmental disasters ‘out there’. The voice that accompanies the present photographic story is situated, individual, and collective at the same time: it represents a viewpoint, an emotional tangle that reflects the lonely experience of one of us who is also and immediately in relationship with the others, and in the absence of the Other. This point of view is provided here in a circular time lapse, as the pandemic overflows the boundaries between past, present, and future, it brings memory in the realm of dreams and filters emotions through fears of the End and loneliness.