A three-minute excerpt from springtime 2020

I’m at home looking into the distance. I don’t know what distance. People address me through a window. I’m at home eating something. And I see violence. This is a collective illusion. Every collective illusion is madness. But real. I am afraid. I’m scared of the time after. That everything will be like before. But also from the change that must happen. Because change is always violent. I lie here and am afraid. And maybe that makes me feel more human than usual. And this act of being part of a great whole — The excitement bores. and it’s ignorant. Someone writes: I admit that I am less depressed during an actual crisis than I am when I am tormented by disasters that I have caused myself… This just makes me angry. There are some things we can be sure of. We know that the Earth will continue to warm; we know that the negative effects of climate change will increase disproportionately when we move to higher temperatures and that the risk of irreversible and catastrophic changes will increase; we know that sea levels will continue to rise long after we have stabilized the temperature of the Earth’s surface and that ice caps and glaciers will continue to melt. We’re all in the same storm. We’re not all in the same boat.

Text and video by Demian Jakob, born in Berne, Switzerland, grew up in Rumonge, Burundi and Real de Catorce, Mexico. In 2012 ze finished an apprenticeship for live event technician at the IHK Karlsruhe, Germany. Hir work as light designer in independent dance and theatre and as musician in boybands and girlgroups was a starting point for hir exploration of emerging and collaborative forms of site and milieu specific productions that balance the offer of service and the invitation on it’s reflection. Hir solo work often starts from embarrassments and is made manifest in essayistic live performances that center on translation, sincerity and violence.

 

“Learning from COVID19: Reflections on knowledge-related commons and practices of self-organization amidst COVID19” is the result of an open call for contributions launched by School of Commons in late April 2020. Shortly after COVID19 put much of the world into lockdown, the contributions form a collection of observations and different practices of learning, self-organisation, and building community amidst a global pandemic. The submitted contributions are varied in form and content, and have not been curated in any way, instead offering space to the diverse experiences and responses of all contributors.