anti-capitalist love letter to Love / no.1
Love,
I hope you are well. I am locked in my studio, working on my projects. I haven’t heard from you since forever. How is everything? How is the lockdown? Sorry for not having the time to reply. I am still trying to keep up with all the chores in this new status quo, but I am fine.
I read your letter, and I am worried, Love. You said you were sick of isolation -that you are no longer coping. I feel for you. I genuinely do, but you need to keep it together. I think the fact that we cannot see each other is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Discrimination, on the other hand, is. It can manifest in so many different ways. It can lead to isolation - the worst kind of isolation. But I don’t feel we mean it the same way. I think that depending on the subject being hit, isolation becomes more severe. Like any other trauma, the myths and the taboos are there. There is a stigma attached to it, perhaps stemmed due to a lack of awareness. The same kind of trauma that people experience during war times. It took a while for people to address it as an epidemic - even to talk about it. Once diagnosed, there was something derogatory to this kind of trauma. The shame of not being responsible enough, the distrust and hatred that you could pass on to other people, and the discrimination that you are not granted privileges or benefits because of your status or current circumstances and the stigma, because you got sick.
I am scared, Love. Can you smell the scent of death? Lonely deaths to be more precise. Obituaries in newspapers, on the radio, on television channels. Numbers. People became the equivalent of numbers. The origins (and sometimes even beyond) of the disease became a specific aspect of identity politics, and the death toll was multiplying like a cancerous cell. Every reporter, whether legit or not, became a quasi-obituary writer. The virus was and still is little or not even understood in its totality. Misinformation and prejudice were and still are rife. People treat it like the plague.
Are you confused, Love? I am not talking about COVID-19. It is not an epidemic, after all, but a pandemic. Bureaucracy must lay the foundations in those definitions if you know, you know. Anyway, that’s another topic. Don’t you remember what happened in the 1980s? You always talked about it.
Do you remember that people would not use its scientific name? People would not openly talk about AIDS. It was the “gay plague” or rather as mistakenly labeled the “gay-related immune deficiency.” A death sentence that you would not even talk about it. And as the world grapples with COVID-19, I am drawing so many parallels. I don’t speak the science language, Love. I let the scientists do their job, as I am doing mine. I am pretty sick of people sharing their opinions about the pandemic. I am sick of all the conspiracy theories. It would be best if they didn’t even have an opinion at all; it is not even debatable at this point. They know nothing, Love. They are not scientists, so why won’t they let us roll with it and find ways to make this novel sufferable?
Don’t be angry with me, Love, for being judgmental. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be judgmental, as everyone is grieving differently during these unprecedented times. I have never seen so many people from so many different parts of the world, sharing the same discomfort and fear at one time. What we don’t know about this virus breaks our feeling of safety, and the grief becomes unmanageable. We all turned virtually to control our anxiety levels, some of us to work, earn some money, or others to dampen some of the pain of the unforeseeable loneliness of isolation.
When we are asked to stay inside, I wasn’t shocked, Love. Why were you shocked? I expected it. Since December I have been following the news, and I realised that what we don’t know might kill us. Pick up my words, Love, and I don’t mean the virus. I mean our ignorance. As you know, I was in Oxford until early March, and I was quite shocked that nobody took COVID-19 seriously. In all the meetings I had with the staff in Oxford, they were all advising us not to contribute to the hysteria. What an irony, Love. The hysteria. Perhaps they did not want a repetition of what has happened with the swine flu. This is not typical of the British, though. I knew how to cope with a potential lockdown; I am war material. You know me, I am not tech-savvy, but the technology was indeed a pervasive feature of my life long before the quarantine. Since I can remember, the first thing I did in the morning was switch on my laptop and write you letters as I was having my early morning brew. Don’t get me wrong; I was never the anti-social type; quite the contrary, I must say. However, I always disliked people in masses, though, and isolation for me turned to be a good thing.
I am not inferring that this is not a difficult time for me, but staying home did not stretch my limitations. The most challenging part was to accept that I would no longer enter the premises of the University of Oxford. The university that I worked so hard to get into. I left Oxford for the Easter break, and I never thought that March the 13th would have been my last night. I never thought that my experience in a leading university would disperse into an antiseptic hand-gel and a mask on an airplane back to Cyprus.
I came home, and it felt good. I am safe. I am staying with my family, and mom cooks homemade food every day - she says hi, by the way. The weather is always lovely here, so thankfully, I do not have to go through an insufferable number of pathetic fallacies that would fit the context we were all going through. To be honest with you, I did not expect that the most challenging part was to try and figure out how to make good use of this time and be productive. The University of Oxford did not have a contingency plan laid out for us, and at the very beginning, we were taking every day as it came. I mean, that indicates that no one, regardless of status, was ever prepared to face a pandemic at the end of the day. Nonetheless, I knew I had to continue with my projects. I had to meet specific deadlines. I had to be on time in all the virtual meetings on Zoom, Teams, Cisco Webex, Skype, Messenger. Reply to all the e-mails. Send you a letter, of course. Do not panic. Do not be a drama queen. Do not be a cunt. Show understanding and compassion. Be considerate. Maintain social distance. Do not go out. Follow the emergency rules of the government. Stay safe. Be alert. Stay sane. That was a lot. That is still a lot.
In the beginning, I started conceptualizing the notion of “complaint” (thank you for that - for introducing me to Sara Ahmed, I mean). It all started when my social media feeds were bombarded with ads and articles on how to stir my productivity. So here’s my anti-capitalist love letter to you. It is perfectly fine if you just wanted to watch Netflix all day during the quarantine. It is perfectly fine if you just cooked all day or cleaned the house like a maniac. It is not perfectly fine, though, to assume that people should work as if nothing happened. But again, this is my anti-capitalist love letter. And they indeed are love letters - no one takes them seriously anymore. Except you, you are different, and I love you for that.
Anyways. I am getting off the topic. I was shocked by your letter - that kind of implied - that all artists should be able to work in isolation because that’s what we do and that the government never supported the arts, so why do it now? Who in his right mind would assume that the lockdown does not or shall not affect people because they happen to be artists? Who in his right mind would be okay with the status quo because the “before” was worse? I know that we did not sign up for stability when we choose to lead in this life. I know that as artists, we always faced precarity in our practise. That does not mean that some of us did not have to alter their studios within confined bedroom walls or even house corridors to stir our productivity. Some of us managed; some of us did not (and please show compassion). Some others do not have the privilege to have their practise revolving around a studio. Some had their shows, premiers, performances canceled, their funding froze, or even their salaries cut. Do not assume because YOU can work everywhere, then everyone else is sailing on that same boat. Spare me the small talk please, that because we are artists we should not be worried and that it is our job to create regardless of the circumstances. Please. I bought it for a brief moment, but I am no longer buying it. My anti-capitalist love letter disapproves of your mentality. I love you, Love, but I disagree.
As you know, I still have an MFA to obtain and some deadlines to meet, which means that currently, I am still working under the obligations of an institution. I am lucky because I have the best support system. The people I am working with are fantastic! They are always there, trying to push me (but not too much) to do work, be on time. I feel for them. They are artists, also affected by these unprecedented times. (I love the way this sounds, un-pre-cedented times. It makes COVID-19 sound so diplomatic which in reality it is not.)
I am very busy with all those long Teams meetings I have with the people at Oxford, which I still find hard to be on time every day for 3-4 hours minimum. I wanted to talk to you about a few questions that have always been on the table, perhaps from day one of the lockdown.
“How do you make art now?”
“What does it mean to be an artist now?”
“How do you incorporate this into your practise?”
All these questions are essential, but they will remain unanswered for a long time. For a reason, every time we discuss our role as artists now, I remember John. Do you remember John? I talked about him in the past. John was one of my mentors back when I was studying painting in the big apple. He was one of those who always questioned me, pushed me, and challenged me into new ways of thinking. Why am I referring to John?
I remember once he told me how it felt like working as an artist in the 1980s in the States. AIDS inserted itself into the art world’s conversations, reflecting much of the fear, the mourning, and the misunderstandings around the epidemic. From our discussions, I remember (or at least that’s how I interpreted it) that John was never too fond of this hysteria in the art world to raise awareness about AIDS. Maybe he wasn’t too fond of the idea that even if the art was not good because it automatically talked about AIDS, it gained impetus. Maybe.
I couldn’t understand his arguments at that point. Blame it on the innocence of my youth, or maybe it was because I wasn’t even born in the 1980s. It’s funny, though, how the AIDS era resonates with what is happening with the world today, not just on an “art level” but on everything. It’s interesting how we kind feel the need to respond to something we do not even understand. Perhaps it is not because I don’t understand it, I think it’s because I haven’t accepted it yet? But if it takes artists to make good or bad art that addresses any crisis, let it be it. If it goes against the conservative cultural institutions we have, then let it be it. If it ultimately raises awareness on controversial issues, please, by all means, it should be done. We need it now - more than ever. My practise is all about trauma, but now I am failing to address this (unprecedented time) in my work. Maybe, I say maybe, it’s because I was told to do it. That could be a possibility.
But is it true? I am addressing it now, even in my letter to you, Love. But now, I am angry. I am still angry with the stigma, of the conspiracy theories, of the abuse of power, and the cuts in our public health system. It took people a pandemic to realize that national health care should not be a privilege or designed for the few. It took people a pandemic to recognise that we will never mourn collectively because our status is a shield to a crisis. It took people a pandemic to realize that doctors, nurses, scientists, workers of the health care system should be treated with respect and should not be paid less than a football player.
But then again, all workers should be treated with respect. Period. Except for corrupted cops. You know me, Love, I will never change. Sorry, not sorry. I miss you terribly. Hope to hear from you soon. Write back when you can.
I love you, Love.
Yours,
Vasileia