A month into our collective isolation, we continue to transition our "real-life" skills into...whatever other shit we hope we're good at: cooking, staring, speed walking, webinar porn... And muffled under the saw-toothed desktop sound of clicking "empty trash", we each learn how to become video artists.
Like the coronavirus-prophetic 1970s-80s works of George Kuchar's "Weather Diaries", Vito Acconci's "Theme Song", Abramovich's hair brushing psychobabble "Art Must Be Beautiful".....many of us perform solo with our cameras in isolated settings, shamelessly alone and going mad ~ the camera lens as our only salvation.
Though, for intimacy junkies like me, anything less than a haptic hologram will not suffice. What was once performing for a room full of sounds, facial expressions and smells, now bounces off tunnel walls, returning to its source as empty emoji hearts & likes ~ or even perhaps, no feedback at all. For some of us...our identities literally can't compute.
Still, we can't let ourselves beep a slow robotic death - although confined, we must test our wingspan within the space we have. As it seems, those pioneering video artists may be our earliest flying ancestors, and the small inventive hops we take to survive may take flight as a new important niche of an evolving art.
"Some opportunities are only possible when things are fucked up" - Austin Coppock
Pivotal corona-blasting innovations may not be readily visible, but the hard labors of this time will nonetheless weed out the bullshit while we wait. Not only are we seeing what is broken systematically and politically, we must also come to terms with what's not built to last in our personal lives (people, jobs, habits, the limitations of my iPhone 6s).
With the difficulties of early April behind us, and Mercury FINALLY out of its deep sea voyage through Pisces (OMG since early February) we may finally jab a beak through the cage...when before we were chewing at the bars, pacing confused and rattling our water bottles.
Clarity about how to navigate restrictions may communicate itself more directly, and a greater impulse to take charge of our lives within these limitations will ensue. With Venus in Gemini until early August (in for a long haul with her retrograde next month), it’s more important than ever, to speak up and share our ideas with others -- at least to help dissolve the cages of our own mind.
On April 26, the Taurus Sun will cross the path of the freedom seeker, Uranus - helping us climb to a perch high enough to glimpse outside the canopy. We may not be able to fly just yet, but from here we can glance at where we one day may go.