COVID E-LIT
Digital Art During the Pandemic
2022 Documentary
Length: 44:12.
Features interviews with Annie Abrahams, Abraham Avnisan, Giselle Beiguelman, xtine burrough, Sharon Daniel, Ben Grosser, Mark Jeffery, Erik Loyer, Mark C. Marino, Bilal Mohamed, Judd Morrissey, Jörg Piringer, Giulia Carla Rossi, Mark Sample, Alex Saum-Pascual, and Jody Zellen.
Full film available athttps://vimeo.com/544980228.
Contact: covid.elit.film@gmail.com
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Producers:
Anna Nacher
Søren Bro Pold
Scott Rettberg
Ashleigh Steele
Sponsored by:
Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus University
Bergen Electronic Literature Research Group
COVID E-LIT: Digital Art During the Pandemic follows sixteen digital artists’ experiences of the early COVID-19 pandemic throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. Through interviews with each artist, the documentary explores how measures taken to control the pandemic affected their artistic practice, ability to engage collaborators and audiences, daily life, and – most crucially – the subjects of the art they produced.
The pieces featured in the documentary range from visceral expressions of the anxiety brought on by the disease’s volatility ( Pandemic Encounter ; COVID-19 Soundpoem ) to the products of day-to-day rituals done to bring routine and spark reflection at a moment that challenged these ( I Got Up 2020: Pandemic Edition ; Lost Inside Journal ). They testify to how the pandemic changed long-standing projects and performance habits ( Avenue S, Ghost City ; QuarantineArtTV ) and exacerbated issues endemic to already-ailing social and political institutions ( EXPOSED ; Coronário/Coronary ). They feature performances that dramatize the body’s problematic relationship to digital infrastructures ( Room #3 ; The Tenders ) and exaggerate the aspects of those infrastructures that hijack human vulnerability ( The Endless Doomscroller ; Content Moderator Sim ). Alongside stark representations of loss ( Infinite Catalog of Crushed Dreams ; U.S. Covid Deaths 9/11 Visualization ) are fun, whimsical responses to the constraints of isolation and lockdown ( Coronation ; The British Library Simulato r) – a testament to just how diverse our experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic were and continue to be.
All of the documentary’s works formed part of the Electronic Literature Organization: Platform (Post?) Pandemic Conference and Festival’s (ELO 2021) exhibitions, available here in the Covid and Performances sections. A dedicated research collection can be found on ELMCIP here .
The film was previewed at the University of Bergen, Norway, and as part of the 2021 Oslo International Poetry Festival. Several libraries have included it in their collections, among them the Roskilde Library in Denmark, the Bergen Library in Norway, and the British Library in the UK.
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Biographies
Anna Nacher / Associate Professor
Institute for Audiovisual Arts, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
Anna Nacher is Associate Professor at the Institute for Audiovisual Arts, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland and a member of the Electronic Literature Organization’s Board of Directors. She is the author of three Polish-language books about television and gender, popular culture, and locative media. Her diverse research interests include vernacular digital culture, new media art, electronic literature, and environmental humanities. Her most recent publications discuss colonialization in video games ; anti-racist and feminist activism in Polish-language online spaces ; and a revitalization of Jenkins’ notion of transmedial storytelling . She is also an improvisational musician and sound artist with the Magic Carpathians Project , among others. Since 2020, she has been collaborating with Victoria Vesna and UCLA Sci|Art Center. They are currently working on a collaborative archiving project entitled Breath Library.
Søren Bro Pold / Associate Professor
Digital Aesthetics, Aarhus University, Denmark
Søren Bro Pold is Associate Professor of Digital Aesthetics at Aarhus University, where he leads the Humans and Information Technology research program. His latest work includes a literary analysis of users’ relationships to metainterfaces ; an article about the translation practices particular to pieces of electronic literature ; and a co-authored book about the disruptive potential of metainterface aesthetics both on and off the Cloud . He is also a founding member of the Digital Aesthetics Research Center.
Scott Rettberg / Professor
Digital Culture, Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway
Scott Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture at the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author or co-author of a number of novel-length works of electronic literature (among them The Unknown , Kind of Blue , and Implementation ); combinatory poems (such as Frequency ); films (such as The Catastrophe Trilogy , Three Rails Live , and Toxi•City ); and immersive digital experiences (like Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project ). His book Electronic Literature is a comprehensive study of the history and genres of electronic literature, and was the winner of the 2019 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature.
Ashleigh Steele
Digital Culture, Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway
Ashleigh Steele is a Master’s student at the University of Bergen’s Department of Digital Culture. Before joining the documentary team, she worked as a multi-platform journalist and news producer at several international news organizations, including CNN and Al Jazeera. Her MA thesis will discuss the interrelations between post-truth, misinformation, and “free speech” apps.
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Stills
From “I Got Up 2020: Pandemic Edition” / xtine burrough
From “Room #3” / Alex Saum-Pascual
From “The Tenders” / Abraham Avnisan, Mark Jeffery, and Judd Morrissey