in times of quarantine

These are virus times, borderless times, times of contagion. The viral, a poisonous secretion, smoothly ignoring or simply suspending a border that always appeared absolute, secured, unsurmountable. From a virus point of view that border never existed more than as a matter of permeability, transition, propagation. Yet from another perspective that only occasionally – we have to admit – appeared to be other than reliable, this border always seemed plausible and sustainable and, should it tear, it would be due to our own transgressions.

The most frequent comment these days is a question: What is really happening? While many of us have become increasingly sensitive to limits, to the fact that current ways of living are approaching the absolute threshold, there is still the lingering reliance upon the nature-culture divide. Nature-culture; a frontier line that has provided and still seems to provide an ontological foothold of sorts, without which existence would simply slip between our fingers.

So, while the border is suspended, we submit ourselves to quarantine, a state of exception by the very disintegrating border. What are the implications of this self-inflicted emergency situation? As humans, we shelter within our own constructions, within our bounded spaces, within forms of our own creation. In quarantine, we dread the conditions under which it would be possible to step outside.

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