COVID E-LIT: Digital Art During the Pandemic, with Producer, Scott Rettberg (Stark 103, Winona State University)
COVID E-LIT: Digital Art During the Pandemic (a 45 minute documentary) follows sixteen digital artists’ experiences of the early COVID-19 pandemic throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. Through interviews with each artist, the documentary explores how measures taken to control the pandemic affected their artistic practice, ability to engage collaborators and audiences, daily life, and – most crucially – the subjects of the art they produced. The pieces featured in the documentary range from visceral expressions of the anxiety brought on by the disease’s volatility ( Pandemic Encounter ; COVID-19 Soundpoem ) to the products of day-to-day rituals done to bring routine and spark reflection at a moment that challenged these ( I Got Up 2020: Pandemic Edition ; Lost Inside Journal ). They testify to how the pandemic changed long-standing projects and performance habits ( Avenue S, Ghost City ; QuarantineArtTV ) and exacerbated issues endemic to already-ailing social and political institutions ( EXPOSED ; Coronário/Coronary ). They feature performances that dramatize the body’s problematic relationship to digital infrastructures ( Room #3 ; The Tenders ) and exaggerate the aspects of those infrastructures that hijack human vulnerability ( The Endless Doomscroller ; Content Moderator Sim ). Alongside stark representations of loss ( Infinite Catalog of Crushed Dreams; U.S. Covid Deaths 9/11 Visualization ) are fun, whimsical responses to the constraints of isolation and lockdown ( Coronation ; The British Library Simulator) – a testament to just how diverse our experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic were and continue to be. COVID E-LIT: Digital Art During the Pandemic was produced by Anna Nacher, Søren Pold, Scott Rettberg, and Ashleigh Steele and was supported by a grant from DARIAH-EU.
