CONTAGION15 June - 24 July 2020
15 June - 24 July 2020
The incredible speed at which the Covid-19 outbreak has spread globally, with its devastating impact, has revealed the absolute connectedness of the lives of the entire human population, as well as the complete assimilation to its surrounding environment. The fundamental distinctions on which our political order is based – national borders, socio-cultural differences, and even the separation between humans and other animal species – have thus appeared to be totally fictitious. A system so far considered unchallengeable has been irrevocably revealed in all its vulnerability. Beside being the way in which viruses proliferate, contagion manifests itself as the true dimension of human coexistence; a dimension which crosses boundaries and unfolds through propagation, rather than linear progression. Yet through this new perspective, elements of human activity usually framed within clearly defined categories – codes of communication, patterns of behaviour, systems of thought, and so on – emerge as the results of constant processes of contamination, which cannot be contained within a spatially and temporally delimited place.