The world was not prepared for what was coming!
On March 11th 2020 the Word Health Organisation classified the outbreak of Coronavirus SARS-COV-2 as a pandemic. At that time more than 118,000 cases were detected in 114 countries; 4,291 individuals died.
What does that mean?
A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or even worldwide, affecting a substantial amount of people. Governments around the world started to take tough measures in the attempt to regain control of the situation, but besides the prevention of infection, the social, political, economical and individual costs are enormous. The challenge of getting through this is a global task and hopefully we will be sensible enough to make the right decisions.
The pandemic will be over one day, but the virus will stay!
Time to enter THE VOID!
The prevailing Covid 19 pandemic is a crisis of global extent. Social transformation processes are noticeable as the necessary intervention measures have an enormous impact on public life, politics, the economy and the individual. Potentially, everyone is affected by this exceptional situation and faced with the task of having to develop coping strategies. It is not yet possible to predict what long-term social changes the pandemic will result in and whether these will have a positive or negative impact on social life. Art and culture professionals – as an important part of society – will undoubtedly process this situation in their works and thus contribute to society’s coming to terms with the pandemic. For the editorial artbook “THE VOID – A pandemic entropy”, international artists and designers have provided their works on the terms “Pandemic“ and „Isolation”. The personal and creative examination of the crisis opens up individual perspectives on the Covid 19 pandemic. For this reason, a dramaturgical concept was developed that meaningfully connects the divergent works of the artists on a meta-level. For this purpose, excerpts from Franz Kafka’s unfinished story “Der Bau” (1931) are integrated as a framework story. In the realization of the artbook, the focus was therefore laid on the development of a narrative that opens up points of contact for the recipient which create possible interpretation and reflection on his or her own experience of the crisis, thus enabling a discourse on social structures and processes of change. Information graphics and public sources expand the overall context in terms of content and establish a connection to the pandemic situation through the purely informative aspect. All components concerning the book object were brought into a unified context with regard to the design concept, aiming to create an overall product that reflects the context of the topic in all aspects. Therefore, an attempt was made to relate all aspects to each other on the level of content, design and material. The resulting overall work is to be understood as a snapshot of a global exceptional situation, which confronts the reader with the question of how one’s own perspective and, on the other hand, social structures might change once this pandemic has been overcome.
Impressions of the Artworks:
Special thanks to all the artists!
This artbook could not exist without you!
