A story by Anivia Beylard

The COVID-19 crisis has many levels and faces, and Anivia spent her time in France’s strict lockdown mapping the narratives, meanings and vocabularies emerging from screens. She captured her experience through interviews and a collection of video and news items, composing the daily chaos of the new norm that emerges through words like “essential workers”, “quarantine”, “masks” and “privilege.” As she reveals: “I decided to use clips of the great outdoors for the background that had already been used as a background for some of the witnesses I collected. I think it highlights the relationship we have with the outside: we romanticize it as we yearn to be there; it is so beautiful, so gracious, and we look upon it from a ‘God-like’ perspective while being continuously confronted with dehumanising practices and tactics of governments and the theatrics of the media, while trying to make sense of our own experience, and what ‘the new normal’ is supposed to be.” As she explains, it is a work in progress as things are continually unfolding implicating us.