'Like a glass of iced water to the face': filmmakers, artists and actors on Covid-19
shake hands still? Details that feel like nothing until you fixate on them.
My anxieties led to something else: a desire to do more than I am. I’m working hard to feed my family, and staying indoors like we’ve been told to. But I’m lucky, and many people are not. I had an unpublished novel, K&R – a thriller, that’s entirely coincidentally about a family trapped in a house – and decided to sell it digitally, with all proceeds going to charities helping those who need it. The novel came from a dark time in my life; maybe this way it’ll be able to do some good.
K&R is available to buy online as an ebook. All proceeds will go to charities helping people during the Covid-19 pandemic, including Street Kitchen and Doctors of the World.
Natalie Cassidy, actor
We stopped working a month ago, and the pace of change in my life is incredible. Some actors go job to job, but I started at EastEnders aged 10 playing Sonia, and this year I’ll turn 37. Just like for our audience, it’s odd to see the show close down when you’re part of it: it’s a home from home.
It’s hard artistically, I’m worried about the muscles in my brain I use for acting. When I go on holiday, I always feel a bit rusty on returning. Maybe I’ll learn some monologues, look through the plays I’ve got on the bookshelf.
All these cancellations have left huge voids in people’s lives, although thankfully – because EastEnders records ahead – our episodes are still airing. But if this goes on for a long time we’ll have to get creative. Maybe we can put something out there ourselves – video conversations between characters maybe?
And a decision will need to be made as to whether EastEnders is going to deal with this situation on screen. Sonia’s a nurse – she’d have been on the frontline of this pandemic.
Mary McCartney, photographer
I’d been working on an exhibition called Found before this happened – going through my archive looking for natural moments. Suddenly, the pictures that stood out were these moments of affection between two people – simple, casual moments had now become so charged. I’ve been posting them on my Instagram with the hashtag #MomentsOfAffection – because if we can’t have those moments, maybe we can get some solace out of being able to look at them.
So far I’ve posted images such as Mark Rylance kissing another actor on the cheek backstage at Twelfth Night; circus performers holding hands on a tightrope; a couple on a riverboat in Hong Kong where he has his arm
around her and she has her head on his shoulder.
There’s a picture of my father Paul with his grandson Arthur lying on his tummy. It was taken in 1999 and captures that feeling of true affection. Right now, our situation is the same as everyone else’s – all the generations have landed where they are and everything has been thrown into question. Thank goodness for FaceTime and Zoom.
Tomás Saraceno, artist
In my studio, the physical work has stopped. I’ve been reading Harriet A Washington, who makes studies revealing that we don’t all breathethe same air. In north America, half the population breathes poor quality air and has asthma and high degrees of mortality. And coronavirus is making this inequality even more obvious – there’s a direct relationship between Covid-19 and the unequal accessibility to clean air.
On 25 January, we were in Argentina with a lot of indigenous communities who live on the margins of a salt lake, where there’s huge extraction of lithium. We went up in a black, solarpowered hot air balloon and broke six world records. On it was written: “Yes to life, no to lithium, yes to water.” One tonne of lithium needs 200m litres of water to be extracted, and the indigenous people who live around that area are suffering from the process.
When you’re flying in a hot air balloon which is just powered by the sun, you need to be really attuned to the weather. We’re all on board spaceship Earth, and there’s an unequal distribution of the resources. Many of the passengers are disappearing, human and not.
There was a beautiful Instagram post from Extinction Rebellion who said that we have to be really careful talking about the diminishing of pollution in relationship with the coronavirus. We have to be attentive and sensitive to the loss of life. Instead of being on Earth together, the virus forces more distance between us. Hopefully, art can engage us in journeys of solidarity and connect us again.
When my exhibition in Florence was closed, I didn’t even have the time to think about it – I’m more thinking about the lives of my family and friends in Italy, you know? I read an article the other day about an indigenous population who thought about coronavirus as a portal. If you’re not very careful you can fall in this portal, but if you’re careful it can take you into a new dimension. So I don’t read the newspaper more than two times a day, and I meditate. There’s a kind of media that’s addictive, it affects your ability to think by connecting people in a way that’s not good. Now when we start to digitise the art and move it into a new medium, we have to learn how to navigate the web – things that we thought we knew already.
Desiree Akhavan, film-maker
Sirens scream outside my window in New York, all day and all night. I’ll forget for a minute. It’ll start to feel like I’m playing hooky from the most tedious elements of my life: crowded subways, pointless meetings, obligatory dinners I never wanted to schedule in the first place. Then, sirens flood the apartment, and it’s like a glass of iced water to the face.
When I ask my dad if he’s well stocked, he says there’s no need! He goes to the store every other day. I stress the importance of going to the store no more than once every two weeks, and I’m met with: “But I live right next to ShopRite!” My lectures feel limp and inarticulate – deja vu of me at 13 outside Claire’s Accessories, failing to convince him my quality of life would improve with a second ear piercing.
He says: “You think this is scary – ha!
The Islamic Revolution was scary.”
I’ve been writing a film about that revolution, and it’s becoming more relevant by the hour. The sirens, the fear, the empty shelves, the new reality that’s no longer relevant an hour later. I’m finally a character in the stories I was raised on. It feels a bit like coming home. Only it’s a terrifying home where your heart lives in your oesophagus, and the threat of loss manifests itself as constant paranoid fear that rings in your ears like a score (the terrifying Mica Levi kind, not Philip Glass).
There’s been a lot of noise in my life this past year – around how to be more popular, more palatable. Somewhere, amidst the sirens, the volume on all the bullshit got turned off. I’m feeling a level of joy and gratitude I hadn’t allowed myself. It reminds me of how sex becomes a bit spectacular when you feel you’re on the brink of losing your partner. Perhaps that will be what happens to art? Maybe this will become an opportunity to stop worrying about all the noise and find a way to connect to the core of who we are, why we do this, and what we’re saying.
Enni-Kukka Tuomala, artist
I’m an empathy artist and designer – as far as I know I’m the first in the world. So much of my work is about people coming together, and before
Covid-19 that meant in person. I would run empathy workshops or have people collaborate on artworks. I’ve even had politicians playing with balloons in the Finnish parliament.
The pandemic has proven a big challenge. But it’s also made me realise that focusing on empathy is more relevant than ever. So I’ve been working overtime to redesign my projects so that they can take place remotely. It’s given a newfound urgency to my work.
I’m planning on using digital platforms, like Zoom and Google Hangouts. But I’m also also looking at things like literally phoning people up. I’ve got a tool called the Menu For Conversation, which is a guide to having a conversation that includes bigger questions that might be hard to ask under normal interactions. I’m hopeful people can use this to speak over the phone and connect.
We know that loneliness is a huge issue in this country; being forced into isolation gives us all a chance to experience what it’s like for a lot of people in their daily lives. I hope we can all develop a sense of empathy that will be much more far-reaching than the current crisis.
Enni-Kukka Tuomala is Open House artist in residence at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge