Floor 5 stands eerily quiet. The door pushed open makes the quiet known before the silence engulfs. Static, stagnant air, unpunctuated by the movement of bodies, holds sunbeams streaming from windows unblinded by the morning sun. Standing now in this ‘new normal’, scanning for voices, surrounded by the non-human, the more than human presence, quiet, quieter, quietest. Sounds not heard until listened to.
Phone in hand, captures snap-shot moments of the ‘the uncanny, the weird, the eerie’[1]. The heightened noticing [2] the last 20 months enabled, creates a multiplicity of stories [3] of non-human, more-than-human, human entanglements, of trans-corporeality [4], of a virus. The precarity and vulnerability of systems of existence, of human exceptionalism, exposed.
Coat off. Bag, unpacked. Sounds disturb the silence, calling out, letting others know.
Coat off. Bag, unpacked. Sounds disturb the silence, calling out, letting others know. But there is no-one here; strange to be greeted mid-morning by no-one, no body. Papers, books, pens, mugs, no hands holding, hugging, taking, placing, writing; yet seats and desks, not empty but full of what was, is and will/never be or never was. Seeking tea as company, the mug hurriedly discarded from another time, now colonised by new occupiers; milk, saliva, microbes borne on air, landed in the time passed between then and now leads me to the space where once companionship was enjoyed, now caution. Where once human interaction with objects provided opportunities for contagion and infection of enthusiasm, motivation, ideas, thoughts and plans, a different unintentional sharing creates potential for withdrawal, a move away, a hesitancy. In these spaces bodies when present stand at a distance, sanitised before and after, cleansed.
As another wave threatens, we once again waver, holding back, the outstretched arms once again withdrawn, reconsidering the contact longed for, natural. Instead the hand raises, waves, signals contact without connection.
These strange times……. unprecedented times…….uncertain times.
Time suspended.
This liminal space, a hiatus, a hinterland or a pause for possibilities?
‘Precarity is the condition of being vulnerable to others. Unpredictable encounters transform us; we are not in control, even of ourselves. […..] Indeterminancy, the unplanned nature of time, is frightening, but thinking through precarity makes it evident that interdeterminacy also makes life possible’[2].
The white board captures offers of connection and conviviality; written in a time of seeking togetherness, generating belonging; bars, pubs, cafes to enjoy company, engage, collaborate, laugh, relax. The green ink still firmly present, reluctant to give up hope of better times even though it is almost two years since pen held in hand added to the list, waiting for normal times to resume.
Where Covid had disciplined; rows on screens, blank boxes, faceless names, non-voices ‘on mute’, now there was a throwing off of masks, reckless enjoyment of expression, nuance, laughter.
The fear March 2020 brought has subsided, but its presence lingers, faded now but still here. Gone are the arrows which guided bodies in an orderly, socially distanced flow around a predominantly empty building. Remnants of yellow and black stretched across toilet door, reducing the number allowed, stubbornly cling to metal frames. Reminders to cleanse, to sanitise, curl now at the edges; losing its urgency, the power of the message waning, wavering. Like children’s paintings of rainbows and unicorns stuck to windows so too the pan-banging, claps for heroes sung and unsung, the roll call of lives lost, likewise silenced.
September had brought bodies, full of anticipation of connection, togetherness, almost/not-quite, rooms full of hope, conversations full of interruption, gleeful talking over, and palpable merriment. This hope had lurked patiently in the corners, cubbies and snickets, waiting for the next moment to emerge between waves. Where Covid had disciplined; rows on screens, blank boxes, faceless names, non-voices ‘on mute’, now there was a throwing off of masks, reckless enjoyment of expression, nuance, laughter. The ‘hyper-awareness’ of being both observer and observed [5] temporarily pixelated out, still present but absent in the excitement of the moment. Gone too the domestic intimacy of on-line encounters; duvets, sofas, fireplaces, cats and dogs, parents, partners, children. The bed-head bleary eyed replaced by the windswept, rain-dosed entanglement with weather, blown-in, sunned, blinking. Where the real and the virtual merged, entangled, in hybridity, now the screens at the back stand blank, empty, silent; the action now in the room. Yet the green person on timetable still stands by, poised ready to fill the void another ‘wave’ might create. Wave, singular, yet never alone, always waves, multiple, multiplicity of Covid.
December 2021, the Christmas preparations should be in full-swing; a long outbreath, a deep sigh, the end of another pandemic term in sight. Where once it was Delta’s invisibility now Omicron is dampening the hope of respite; the new Covid variant once again creating a retrenchment from these spaces. A concern for what has been briefly enjoyed emerges in tentative emails and messages; ‘alternative provision’, ‘now on-line’, ‘awaiting further information’. Yet at the same time, ‘the party is still on’, the hesitancy to meet, discarded in the offer of wildness, danger, freedom, connection.
‘A word for better days: ‘respair’ (16th century) – fresh hope; a recovery from despair’.
(Susie Dent Twitter, 10th Nov, 2020 https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1326065327453724672)
References:
1. Bird, J. and Green, D. (2021) ‘Covid spaces and places: the uncanny, the weird and the eerie’, entanglements, 4(2), p.32-49, p.47.
2. Tsing, A. (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the possibilities of life in capitalist ruins, Oxford, Princeton University Press, p.20.
3. Massey, D. (2005) For Space, London: Sage.
4. Alaimo, S. (2018) ‘Trans-corporeality’, in Bradotti, R. and Hlavajova, M. (eds), The Posthuman Glossary, Bloomsbury Academic, London, p. 435-438.
5. Ben-David, Y., Ikeson, T. and Kaye-Tzadok, A. (2021) ‘Lost in the matrix: Dialectical tensions in facilitating virtual video groups during Covid-19 pandemic’, Internet Interventions, 18, doi:10.1016/j.invent.2021.100445.
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