Available Futures or: How to Mourn When You're Not Done Dying, A Reflection

Abstract

The following pages describe works that I have made during the 15 months (and counting) of the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty years from now, glib didactics describing “this time” will pepper the walls of museums for their surveys of “art practice in the time of plague” (or whatever) and I’m already rolling my eyes – rolling them to keep from crying. The true accounting of the pandemic has yet to be performed, but I – as a writer, as a student, as a teacher, as a feeler of feelings – offer these words to the record as a primary source. As a real-time recording. As a survey of my art practice in the time of plague. It’s a little creased and torn and crispy from the drying tears, but I think it will serve. My experience of the pandemic has been a languid oscillation between fey hope and grief, with particular moments and days inflected with profound frustration or bewildered catatonia. The following document comprises an overview of the creative output which emanated from that sense of bewilderment. In the first section, I will present two pieces of writing produced during the initial weeks and months of lockdown. The second section consists of an explanatory summary of a web based Machine Learning project, along with images and a brief text that was written for the piece. The final section contains a narrative retelling of the events leading up to, during, and after lockdown.