 
Publishers all over the globe are reporting a shocking rise in sales
of epidemic-based novels.
The Publishing house Penguin recently recognised it was carrying out
a good deal of effort to reprint the English translation of the novel
The Plague, by the French autor and existentialist philosopher
Albert Camus, now out of stock on Amazon, and having sales increased
up to 150% compared to the same period of
the previous year.
Published on the 10th of June in 1947, The Plague’s
story is based in the 1940’s Algerian city of Oran,
which suddenly is swiped by an epidemic of bubonic plague,
with a special emphasis on the effects this has on the psyche of the
various characters placed in the narrative.
Previously focused on monotony and materialism, life in Oran radically changes
after corpses start piling up on the street. The city is quarantined
in an effort to contain the propagation of the disease. The insiders
are quickly dominated by fear. The different responses they take are
epitomized in the figure of Dr. Rieux, the ethical hero
of the novel, who continuously fights to contain the
spreading of the disease, and the journalist Lambert, who is
just a passer-by and tries to escape the city, only turning to help once
his project is frustrated by the vigilantes.
Many readers have come to conlude that, despite the many epidemics that the city of Orán has .
undergone throughout history, The Plague was a metaphor
for the fascisms that took place in Europe on the first half of the
XX Century.
However, what’s most striking about The Plague is the detailed explanation  of the disease, the sudden disasters
and the remedies that the inhabitants try to carry out, how it
affects their actions and decisions, how it spreads to condition not just
who lives, but how one may live. Yet The Plague, in it’s
disatrous core, is also able to light up the feelings of solidarity,
lost by the purely material interests of the monotonous life,
bringing back humanity from the ashes of society itself.
I must say  I first found it
funny when I heard that this book’s popularity was rising amid the global
proliferation of the Covid-19. Yet however, the ties
that link the contemporary state to the fiction of the work of Camus
leave no place to doubt on why this 1947 novel is
enjoying such a revived success. In reading this work
the necessary distance with the characters proves itself as
the tool to find parallelisms with our day to day peers.
From those rushing to take as much as they can from the supermarket,
thus leaving empty shelves for their neighbours,
to those that volunteer themselves to the point of exhaustion working
to contain the spreading, and the anonymous heroes that
don’t think twice before donating their savings and masks to help.
Yet the impact of the Covid-19 in our approach
to our culture goes much further than the rise in taste for
apocalyptic fiction.
Just when the Coronavirus outbreak seems to go down in China,
Japan and South Korea, as well as countries such as Italy and Spain
back are facing one of the worst health crisis in their recent histories.
With more than 8,000 cases of the coronavirus
documented within its borders, Italy went on lockdown last Monday
while officials work to contain the virus’s spread.
As Italy’s 60 million citizens continue adjusting to life under quarantine,
galleries throughout the country have begun closing to the public
temporarily. In trying to help stop the spreading,
museums across the country have also closed, and events such
as the Venice Architecture Biennale said last week that it
would delay its opening until the end of summer.
In a recent interview, the art critic Francesco Bonami said the following:
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Community of Madrid, in Spain, where this video is being recorded right now,
also recently saw the closing down of it’s Museums and I wouldn’ be surprised
to see harsher actions taking place by the time
this video is published.
 
Japanese insitutions such as the Mori
Art Museum in Tokyo, the Kyoto National Museum have
also been closed down until mid-March and China, where the coronavirus
was first spotted,
has been among the countries most deeply affected by the outbreak.
Museums, biennials, and fairs took prompt action,
closing their doors within days after it became clear that it would be
a difficult task to contain the pathogen, postponing
their activities or, as was famously the case of Basel
Hong Kong 2020, finally cancelled among disputes. Gallery Weekend Beijing,
decided it would delay its 2020 edition,
planning to hold it in mid-April. The National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou, and the Union Art Museum in Wuhan are among the institutions whose doors have not yet been opened again.
the Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou, and the Union
Art Museum in Wuhan are among the institutions whose doors have not yet
been opened again.
I must say, however, that I am reticent to call this a tragedy. I remember when ISIS
destroyed the Buddhas in the City of Palmyra and back in Europe
art fair participants performed a 1 minute of silence for them
instead of the human victims of the jihad.
Moreover, I’d say this situation has lend us to experience art in a way perhaps not new in
it’s form, but definitely new in it’s extent.
As a result, many museums turned their eyes to the virtual, including Beijing's
world-famous Palace Museum, which sits inside the Forbidden City,
and the National Museum in Beijing, which is hosting
a show about Chinese artifacts repatriated
from Italy available for online browsing. The decision to close
has a much more serious impact on China's private museums,
as they do not receive funding from the government
and are primarily sustained thanks to sponsorship and ticket sales.
100 online exhibitions and galleries are linked to from
the NCHA website -- (both in Chinese). though only some offer
English info, links are left in the description.
The Power Station of Art in Shanghai invited it’s audience
to share their favourite passages from the museum's publications and to create a sort
of online magazine in its official WeChat account,
and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, as an
extension of the exhibition Voluntary Garden, partnered with the video-streaming
platform Kuaishou and presented Voluntary Garden Online Concert: Sonic Cure
on  February 19,
in which nine performers from around the globe live-streamed musical performances
via cellphone screens.
But definitely my favourite initiative among all of those has been
M Woods with it’s ongoing virtual exhibition A Hypothetical Show
for a Closed Museum, which was launched the 13th of February on it's
social media channels (WeChat, Weibo and Instagram) coining over
40 artists and, in line with the social situation, it is curated .
focusing on themes such as nature, isolation and familial bonds,
which resonates well with people under quarantine, just as the work
of Camus has showed to resonate.
This channel itself has been thought of as a self-sustained project that,
although it may have been inaugurated during a quarantine, is aimed
for the long run, so if you’re just new to the channel like,
subscribe, and be alert for new notifications.
They’ll probably come soon.
I guess we'll have plenty of time.
 
 
 
 
 
