Slow. the. fuck. down.
Do you remember what an ordinary day in your life looked like last autumn? Back when Corona was just a below average beer and social distancing described what…
Tag: Thematic Threads
Virus and the City: Urban Experiences in Self-Isolation
The way we make sense of space has radically changed as a novel Coronavirus spread, with no clear end in sight. While our physical surroundings shrink and our…
Allegro vivace… the Italian laboratory, for better or for worse
This little essay was conceived wandering in the Swiss countryside. I’m on sabbatical leave and my whole work and travel program has been disrupted by the measures taken…
Brave New Normal World
When politicians begin to speak of a post-corona “new normality”, what does that imply? And why should we be concerned? The spread of the coronavirus and the…
Infrastructure of the Archive / Archiving Infrastructure #Roadsides
Infrastructure is, in common understanding, a very material thing. We think of it as something made of iron and concrete. Even when going unnoticed in our everyday lives,…
Architecture as/and Infrastructure #Roadsides
Over the past two decades, infrastructure has emerged as a central concept in a larger conversation about architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Providing citizens with reliable infrastructure systems…
Viralscapes. The bodies of others after COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic reveals a vital-lethal entanglement of human and nonhuman bodies at a global scale. This post first draws attention on how different viral strains may…
Un/boxing Fulfillment: A Field Guide to Logistical Worlds
Source Painting by John William Waterhouse, 1896, (Public Domain) In the classic origin tale of “The Box” and its seductions, Pandora is driven by curiosity—a distinctly feminized will…
Eerie desires for the authoritarian state. Covid-19 updates from Italy.
I have been – like anyone else in Italy – in quarantine for the past three weeks. Optimistically, Italy will be on lockdown for the next two…
Waiting for a Dam #Roadsides
Once again, in November 2019, I found myself in an SJVN waiting room. But it was a new waiting room. Many things had changed in the two years…
The Corona Diaries
How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to…
Runways to the Sky #Roadsides
Road building in the Maldives – an archipelago of small coralline islands – sounds a bit like a euphemism for a ridiculous task. Maldivian roads present uniquely closed…
Coronavirus: Less Humanitarianism, More Politics!
This essay was written seated on my couch, trying to make sense of the contemporary ‘state of emergency’ as the world around me has gradually come to a…
The Space-Time of Infrastructure #Roadsides
“Lena, you can turn on the camera now.” The view of the space station changes from monitor to film image. The opening scene of Andrei Ujică’s film Out…
The return of the plague-spreader
Written in lockdown amid the pandemic, this post speculates about the political and epistemological implications of ‘middle-class’ reactions to the present crisis. It is also a cry of…
When the Silk Road Vanished #Roadsides
“I still need to cross Attabad before I reach home” – so our Shimshali travel companion commented matter-of-factly. We had just spent ten days walking along the Pakistan–Afghanistan…
On being voices of prudence in times of a pandemic – #Corona
Many academic disciplines have a lot to say these days about COVID-19. There are the medical experts, of course, epidemiologists, virologists, microbiologists, weighing in on the validity of…
Welcome to #Roadsides
The side of a road is a good place for ethnography, we think. One of us owns a field next to a country road. It is a twenty-minute…
“When Paths Are Closed”: Giulia Cavallo on the Fluid Mosaic
I met Dr. Giulia Cavallo at one of her art exhibitions in Lisbon, Portugal in 2019. For the Fluid Mosaic project she produced a text that is based…
‘The Lines of Destiny’: Leticia Barreto and the Fluid Mosaic
Introduction I met the artist Leticia Barreto in Lisbon, Portugal, during a visit to one of her collective exhibitions. In her contribution to “Fluid Mosaic”, she proposes two…
“L’étranger”: Ariane Benoit on the Fluid Mosaic
Introduction Ariane is an anthropologist and a performer who chose to combine these two disciplines in her professional and personal life. She is now based in Montreal, Canada,…
“Porous Borders”: José Reyes on the Fluid Mosaic
Introduction José Reyes is a researcher and an activist. In his contribution here, he offers us an exercise of autoethnography (Adams et al.)[1], a research method in which…
“In Transit”: Wong Kwang Lin on the Fluid Mosaic
Introduction Wong Kwang Lin is an anthropologist and a dancer based in Singapore. K.L. Wong asked her colleagues and friends to create a collective choreography that brings together…
“On Fluid Mosaic”: Rodell Warner
Introduction I met Rodell Warner in Trinidad while he was collaborating at Alice Yard art residency in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies and then a second time when…