Viral Narrations: Aesthetic Knowledge and the Co-presences of a Pandemic

When concert halls, museums and theaters had to close during the various 2020–22 lockdowns, and exhibitions, film premieres and readings all around the world were cancelled, it seemed that the ‘Covid-19’ pandemic had paralyzed the entire culture sector. On the other hand, this challenging situation has also incited artistic engagement and aesthetic debates, from the re-discovery of ‘classic’ texts to fictional depictions of the ‘new’ pandemic life. In a first step, this article will briefly outline six different approaches to investigating the relationship between ‘Covid-19’ and (political, social, media) borders and boundaries from a media culture perspective in general – with one of them being artists, filmmakers or writers critically addressing the pandemic, the changed conditions of life and art, as well as the social and political consequences. The paper then examines three exemplary case studies of such cultural interventions: Firstly, the re-reading of ‘canonical’ literary pandemic texts with regard to their aesthetic and poetic knowledge, as illustrated by the example of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decamerone (1349/53). Secondly, the analysis of a doctor’s novel published in July 2020 as an example of a rather ‘trivial’ writing, and finally, a comparative perspective at three recent German-language “Corona” novels by Marlene Streeruwitz, Thea Dorn, and Juli Zeh. These examples show how artists and writers are critically responding to a global pandemic that challenges traditional notions of ‘borders’ and replaces the understanding of linearity by an emphasis on co-present processes.