CHRONICLES OF AN ONLINE UNDERCOVER REPORTER IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
When Art Basel Hong Kong announced, on 6 February, that it was
cancelling its March event because of COVID-19, some thought the threat didn’t need to be taken so seriously – like TEFAF in Maastricht, which bl i thely went ahead and opened on 7 March before closing early in a panic because cer tain dealers were already ill. Some of them are now in intensive care…
At the start, rather naively, the art world viewed this development
as a sort of short-term virtual experiment, before realizing that actually it was for real and that a lot of galleries and museums were not going to recover from it so easily. Rather vulgarly, certain art advisers carried on sending out emails marked “business as usual,” which obviously didn’t at all reflect reality since a lot of collectors had lost a lot of money and were leaving the waiting lists, while others decided to wait before spending, speculating on eventual bargains that would be brought on by a market price drop.
And what about all the openings that no one could go to because they weren’t allowed out and all the gallerists and curators were working from home? Postponed once, twice, three times, they were eventually cancelled altogether, the shows achieving a state of ultimate dematerialization. Were we all to meet up on Zoom for virtual gallery openings or join massive collective aperitifs on Houseparty? As it turned out, online exhibitions weren’t terribly convincing, and it didn’t take long for artists to start finding fault, like Aleksandra Mir, whose Instagram texts were endlessly reposted. She rightly pointed out that some institutions, like Saatchi or the Tate, would be bet ter of f thinking about the i r collecting policies, and how to support artists who would be thrown out of their studios because their galleries were closed, rather than asking them to offer works for free so that museums’ Internet sites could have something new or fresh to show.
One of the most interesting initiatives came from the director of London’s ICA, Stefan Kalmár, who asked what happens to supposedly public institutions like his, which actually only receives 20% of its operating budget from the state… For in the end, just like hospitals, cultural institutions have been abandoned and can no longer function, except by sucking up to their donors. Every day, Kalmár’s team – who refuse to do online shows – propose poems, podcasts, and music or films to download, and reflect on the ICA’s future. On E-flux, Hito Steyerl came up with the idea of “Letters against
Separation” as a way of staying together: writers from different parts of the world describe how COVID-19 has affected them in a series of short diary-type texts via which they share their experience of the pandemic.
David Zwirner, in the meantime, has put his firepower at the disposal of twelve younger and smaller galleries, among which are Essex Street, Bridget Donahue and Queer Thoughts, by offering them an online space to showcase the work of an artist of their choice. Hauser & Wirth has decided to donate 10% of its online sales of Condo drawings to The Respond Fund, which is fighting COVID-19. And in Paris, a number of artists and galleries joined forces with collector Laurent Dumas to donate works that were sold on Piasa, in parnership with the collective #ProtegeTonSoignant, to raise funds for healthcare equipment.