The spring of 2020 gave us a brand new global experience. The covid-19 pandemic became everyday reality for most of the world’s citizens. We experienced it directly through social measures, fear for ourselves and our close ones, and uncertain work prospects. We experienced it indirectly through private and public coverage flooding digital screens and individual witness accounts posted on social media. The global media market gave us a variety of images of diverse forms of the crisis – medical, social, political – which we instantly consumed in all corners of the world. It was definitely for the first time in this century, and perhaps for the first time since the global events of the past century, such as the fall of the Berlin wall, that our diverse social and digital worlds became one. At the same time, however, the dramatic situation gave rise to different types of images; those of our notions of what a crisis is and how to face it both individually and collectively. It gave us urgent mental representations of fear and powerlessness whose shared foundation is beyond doubt.
What media and mental images of crisis dominated the past months of the global pandemic? How do media, documentary film, social sciences and contemporary visual arts address the images of health and sickness, danger, fear and crisis?
The individual and collective experience and issues will be discussed by the following guests:
JOHANA KOTIŠOVÁ, media sociologist (Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University in Brno)
VÍT KLUSÁK, documentary filmmaker
EVA ŠLESINGEROVÁ, anthropologist (Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University in Brno)
HANA JANEČKOVÁ, theorist and curator of contemporary arts (FAMU, Display)
Due to the current medical conditions, the debate will be held in the courtyard of Petrohradská Collective.
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