Artist Note #6 – Pandemic Media Archive
April 9, 2021
(Updated April 18, 2021 – with a new memory)
The WHO Declares a Pandemic
Things were ramping up quickly before the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The schools notified us that classes would be online the following Monday. Our youngest asked that we postpone visiting my parents for Spring Break.
That was also the day I went out for groceries. I looked for hand sanitizer but found none. I looked for toilet paper because we genuinely needed some. I debated between Target and Costco and was unsuccessful at both stores. At Target, people were pretty cordial and helpful. One customer and I chatted a bit, trying to help the other find hand sanitizer in the trial sizes section.
Costco was a completely different experience. You could hear the sounds of the moving carts at a faster pace. Women were scampering like mice in a well-stocked kitchen. I do not remember what I brought home, but I didn’t buy toilet paper or hand sanitizer.
The First Days
My partner quickly transitioned to teaching online using Zoom. The kids were attending classes between Zoom and Google Hangouts. And I was laid off from my job in New York. While the family stayed home with their respective school schedules, I switched back to full-time mother mode.
Stores quickly transitioned to physical distancing measures to protect employees and customers.
The Beginnings of Archiving
Meanwhile, a photographer friend and I were catching up about how things were going during the pandemic– him in India/me back in the States. We talked about our respective projects and the images we were seeing. My friend pushed me to photograph new work during the pandemic. The most practical option was through digital means, but I kept making images for the Film Scrolls series via analog.
Creating new work about the quiet life in the suburbs outside of Chicago felt banal to news images I saw and read. Then I began to think about documentation and archiving the news. The pandemic was an unprecedented time. While it felt like the world stopped on March 11, 2020, news sources kept us informed of what was going on outside our private spaces.
And the News Kept Going
The injustices of Amhaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and the list of people before and after continues. Protests sparked outrage and awakened the nation to the injustices of black and brown members in the U.S. and some parts of the world.
The number of COVID-19-related infection cases/deaths continued to rise. Stories of love and loss kept pouring out from friends’ Facebook posts, local and national news outlets.
Anti-Asian hate crimes were reported, but I only read those news stories at the local and regional level (via blogs and friends sharing posts).
Former President Trump’s decisions/indecisions/rhetoric continued.
At the local, state, and national levels, policies to handle the pandemic varied widely. Then to read the news of how other countries addressed the pandemic from South Korea, the EU, and New Zealand showed a stark contrast to how the U.S. handled COVID-19 was, well, depressing.
January 6, 2021
National-Level: The insurrection/breach at the U.S. Capitol.
State-Level: Georgia gives control back to the Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
Local-Level: Someone decided to commit a hate crime against a black-owned small business in my local community.
Exhausted and Relieved
By the time President Biden was inaugurated on January 20th, 2021, I was ready to call the project done. It felt like a natural end to such a mentally and emotionally exhausting year. I didn’t know which image would be the last. Finally, I chose to end with a screenshot of President Biden’s remarks to the nation.
Anti-Asian Hate Crimes/Atlanta Shootings
Meanwhile, I spent a week archiving, organizing images, updating the website for the project. Then on March 16, a white 21-year-old male committed a murder spree in Atlanta, Georgia. He killed eight people, six of who were women of Asian descent. AAPI people in my neighborhood were scared, angry, and hurt. And rightly so.
Now my neighborhood is filled with an eclectic mix of people. Based on what I read in Facebook group posts, several people stood up for black and brown communities and held vigils/marches for BLM. But in the days after the shootings in Atlanta, where were the posts to support the AAPI community?
After a year of documenting/archiving news articles, I thought I would stop. But I still find myself taking screenshots of news articles of hate crimes against people in the AAPI community. It is my way of processing and not wanting to forget their stories.
Reflection
After a year of collecting, here are some questions to ponder: Where do you receive news information? What organizations are your go-to news sources? Which news stories are important to you? Do you read the full article or the top headlines in your social media posts?
If you collected news articles for one year, what would your archive look like?
Read More:
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Visual-Journal-Artist-Notes-Facebook-Post.png
788
940
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2024-09-17 14:58:502024-09-17 15:27:12Artist Note #29 – Silent Clamor Workshop
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Columbia-College-Chicago-MFA-202412.jpg
800
600
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2024-08-31 17:07:062024-09-11 17:34:12Artist Note #27 – A Curatorial Look at Artists and Spaces
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Visual-Journal-Artist-Notes-Facebook-Post.png
788
940
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2024-06-30 18:03:002024-09-01 19:24:32Artist Note #26 – Post-Grad Life
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Pain-Adjacent-Series-1.jpg
1333
2000
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2024-06-06 08:52:332024-06-21 19:50:44MFA Thesis Exhibition Walkthrough
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Class-Notes-Category.png
788
940
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2024-01-12 12:28:022024-06-09 07:59:56Focused on Time
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/4th-Ward-Project-Space-Chicago.png
810
742
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2023-12-07 10:01:072023-12-07 10:02:304th Ward Project Space
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Architectural-Biennial-12.jpg
800
600
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2023-11-19 16:11:132023-11-19 16:11:16Chicago Architectural Biennial 2023
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Photogreenbook-1-e1701960828733.png
793
1019
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2023-11-07 10:43:262023-12-07 09:55:45Photographer’s Green Book
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Violence-of-Handwriting-Across-the-Page-Book-10.jpg
1000
750
admin
https://bettykimphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BETTY-YOUNG-KIM-Header-logo-2.png
admin2023-08-25 16:31:262024-10-06 10:22:17The Violence of Handwriting Across a Page by Bourgeois and Holzer
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!