a prayer to be haunted Micheal Do anointing. burning. lighting. As the COVID-19 pandemic tightened its grip globally, communities across the world quarantined in self isolation. For several months in Australia, a country known for its outdoor and active lifestyle, our streets were sterile and empty. In Sydney where I am writing this - like other parts of Australia - people love to engage with each other, touch, talk and debate in conversation. However, during lockdown, this way of life was replaced by a silence that weighed heavily on the landscape. Casting our minds back, only the occasional passer-by would march briskly through the street; the smell of hand sanitiser became an ubiquitous part of the city’s olfactory landscape; facemasks littered the streets, cast away in stormwater drains and in public spaces. Gone were gestures, like a brief brush on the hand, to affirm connection. That was life in lockdown, an experience which remains the ghostly reality for many parts of the world, even now.
delicate humanism at work As some have identified, this reality is akin to Austrian physicist’s Erwin Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment whereby a cat, contained in a box is both living and dead until it can be proved otherwise. Communities in Australia were treated to both have and not have COVID-19. We expected normality to resume, but did not know when, not all at once and even now, we won’t know whether the world we knew once before will be the same. During this confusing kaleidoscope, humanity has responded - both by instinct and design - to refashion and reassert rituals in the most striking ways, using activities to formalise and mark time. The citizens of Sardinia, Italy, staged balcony concerts to maintain morale; New York collectively applauded front-line workers; individuals at home across the globe were changing clothes to divide their day into work, leisure and family time, while everyone migrated their lives into the online world. Old rituals were paused, while new rituals took their place.
< Jumaadi Born Sidoarjo, Indonesia, 1973 Sunan Kalijaga and Dewi Anjani (detail) 2020
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