Visions of a Post-Pandemic Future
Lockdown Lessons

The Patission Street in Athens is full of life and stories. Stories of fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams of the people who are at home here. Kostis Papaioannou tracks these stories down and captures them like a Polaroid of the moment.

In 2020, as measures to contain the corona virus dominated social life, many people began to connect even more online. In an interview Dr Duhun Choi, professor of journalism and broadcasting at Konkuk University in Seoul, speaks about the development of digital rooms in South Korea.

Associations, effects, outlooks - what do the Indian author Paromita Vohra, the South Korean professor of philosophy Kwang Sun Joo, the Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino and the German professor of sociology Jan Paul Heisig associate with COVID-19 and the worldwide pandemic in their countries and in a global context?

How can Brazilian indigenous art help us to imagine the post-Anthropocene era? Political Ecologist Felipe Milanez considers rising ecological interest in indigenous cultures at the time of COP26, against a backdrop of extractive violence and native resistance.

The outbreak of the pandemic transformed our daily lives: Within families, at work, during free time and in interactions with each other - we experience ramifications and upheavals everywhere. The definitions of closeness and distance seem to have altered. Srishti Gupta Roy takes a closer look at how and where exactly. The illustrator examines diverse areas of life and artistically implements new proximity and distance behaviour in these spheres.

How do museums remain a place of encounter and exchange - even in a digital, post-pandemic world? An interview with Leeji Hong, curator of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Seoul (MMCA).

During the pandemic, museums opted for more open spaces and drew in a portion of the Brazilian population which is traditionally distant from art. On social media, the user substituted the visitor: actively demanding, provoking, and questioning curatorial strategies.

Today, children and adolescents are growing up in the midst of restrictions on physical contact and bans on recreational activities. What will they remember once it’s all over? How will their experiences shape the collective memory? In her comic, the illustrator Beatrice Davies looks for answers.

There are many sayings and proverbs that we use almost on a daily basis without thinking of the meaning behind them. For many of them an image instantly springs to mind – and sometimes that image is incomprehensible, amusing or just wrong. Yet, proverbs are a core element of every language culture. Four artists approach a different language culture in the form of illustrations.

"Corona Rhapsody" is a contribution to the discussion on the question of what has changed in our society since the pandemic. The photographer Rafael Heygster has captured various scenes of public life and diverse social situations.

Efforts to respond to climate change are hampered by our current alienation from nature. Being affected by a changing environment, and recognising how efforts to predict and manage change are always infused with hazardous and uncertain dynamics, demands that we bring embodied, emotional, and affective ways of knowing into conversation with current climate science. To be effective, transformations in the face of climate change need to build on and mobilise these affective relations.

The “Transformations” project of the Goethe-Institut in Brussels and Glasgow – in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow – presents selected scientific, artistic and activist pieces of work on the climate crisis from the global South and the Arctic region.

South Korean philosophy professor Kwang Sun Joo answers the question posed by Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino: ”How do parents in South Korea react to their new role as digital educators alongside teachers? How are families supporting students in regard to an educational setting that places strong emphasis on digital content?” It becomes clear that digital education causes isolation and poses major challenges for single parents.

Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino answers the question posed by Indian author Paromita Vohra: "Which questions regarding Brazil's education system arise as a result of the pandemic?" Here, the issue of social inequality in the education system becomes particular apparent. However, the internet also creates new opportunities.

As brick-and-mortar educational institutions remained shut, digital education became the new normal. Filmmaker and author Paromita Vohra starts the letter exchange by answering how sustainable this model in India is. Will digital learning close or intensify the educational gaps or take a new form altogether?

The pandemic jeopardises not only everyone’s health, but also the well-being of whole societies, testing what solidarity means today. In this module experts ask how much solidarity is needed in times of crisis to keep society from breaking up. Who gets to be represented by whom? Who is legitimised to represent them?

Creative companies in sub-Saharan Africa, each in their own way, have helped to overcome the privations of lockdown, isolation and immobility. Their products reflect the added value of creative work for wider social questions. In the module “Creative Industry” such creative entrepreneurs come together upon invitation of the Goethe-Institut Namibia and discuss ways of collectively constructing a designable future.

The coronavirus has changed the social standing of scientists and researchers in the Global North. Researchers in various disciplines are helping us to understand what positive and negative effects the pandemic had on various social groups. The Goethe-Institut Brussels and its partners will address this urgent question and take the chance to look into the future: How do we want to live from now on?

This past year has made clear that while our lives are coming to a standstill in almost every domain, the dynamic of digital transformation is accelerating. We need new approaches to break out of the cycle of centralised data storage and surveillance technologies. Blockchain technologies allow new ways of working in the cultural domain, but cultural workers must be involved in order to explore and shape the future makeup and organisation of its institutions.

In ways we never imagined a virus now compels the world to keep its distance and regulates the closeness we are allowed to have with others. What happens with us when cultural practices of proximity are so fundamentally questioned? Which forms of distancing has the pandemic required in different social systems? The Goethe-Institut aims to explore these questions in Brazil, Korea, India and Germany. The focus will be on the future: How close to others can we be, and how close do we want to be?