A Journal of the Plague Year
(distantly here with you all)
So, these are weird times.
For those of us with ties to China, it’s been weird times since the start of the year, but it’s finally, properly weird everywhere now. I say “weird”, because there is a cluster of new COVID-19 emotions that don’t seem to have names yet: The copresence of dread and calm. The mixed relief and guilt in being *able* to self-isolate at home (not to mention *having* a home). The fear of buying either too much toilet paper or too little. The bitter necessity of staying away from sick or elderly loved ones to keep them safe. The outrage at governments selfishly refusing to act, which is the direct and inverse corollary to the admiration of the healthcare workers and ordinary individuals who are acting with utmost selflessness. And most of all, the continued confusion and uncertainty. What next? How long? What will happen to the most vulnerable among us? How can we do more to help our neighbors and worlds, when, for the time being, we’re not supposed to go outside*? (*A tiny, immediate stopgap idea for this last one: donate to your local foodbank if you can)
There will be more sacrifice. There will be more grief. There will be more rage. But there will be (and must be) moments of joy, humor, creation and community amidst the gloom.
I’ve been planning to (re)start this newsletter for a while now, even though newsletters are perhaps already retro and blogs are more ripe for a comeback (see Indoor Voices, an actual honest-to-Blogspot blog launched just days ago by my pal Kyle Chayka). But the past weeks have made me more keen than ever to have a space to “distantly socialize” with friends and strangers, to share the thoughts, artefacts and strategies that may make this period more bearable.
Talking about Hong Kong, history, and the rhetoric of disease on the LA Review of Books podcast
In early March, when I was still, like, going places in the world in (with a lot of hand-washing), I joined my friends over at the LA Review of Books podcast to do their weekly “book recommendation” guest spot (it just got released; I’m on around the 19:40 minute mark).
The book I talked about was “A Journal of the Plague Year”, not Daniel Defoe’s 1722 classic (which I have also been re-reading, and remains starkly modern and amazing), but a catalogue from an art exhibition first staged at Para/site Hong Kong in 2013, which then traveled to Taipei, Seoul, and San Francisco. Founded as an artist-run space in 1996, Para/site is one of the coolest galleries in the world (I may be biased because I’ve done projects with them in the past, but just check out their website), and this show, which I saw in its debut iteration in 2013, was typically excellent. It used the 10th anniversary of the SARS epidemic as a lens to explore Hong Kong’s history as a site impacted by global epidemics (dating back to the 1894 Bubonic plague outbreak) and more broadly, the cultural spectre of “contagion” that has been mobilized by Imperialism and other political forces across time. There’s also a very moving thread of tribute to Leslie Cheung, the beloved Hong Kong pop idol who committed suicide during the first weeks of SARS, and became an emblem of that dark time. Alongside the show’s artworks, the beautiful catalogue includes essays and stories on these themes by artists, curators, fiction writers, film scholars and journalists (including the great Dung Kai-Cheung, author of 2012’s “Atlas: the Archaeology of an Imaginary City”, a Calvino-esque mapping of an alternate Hong Kong).
I love this show and its catalogue for many reasons. Of course, it feels personal because I was in Hong Kong as a college student in spring 2003 when SARS broke out, and then lived there for four years, in a city forever shaped by the outbreak (I wrote about some of this in a 2017 essay for Affidavit journal). And because Hong Kong is a place that has faced a recent pandemic, it was arguably better prepared to meet COVID-19 head-on in a way we can all learn from. But the book is also an illustration of the ways that disease can be used as a tool of racism, xenophobia, exploitation and oppression. It feels all too relevant as people of Asian descent are currently facing discrimination and even attacks in various places around the world due to the virus. As the co-curators of the exhibition Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero write in their catalogue introduction, “it seems as if a periodization of modernity could be structured through humanity’s experience with pandemic diseases and the paranoia and acts of exclusion that follow.” No kidding.
One of the most haunting images from the exhibition - a famous photograph of British colonial police clearing houses in a Bubonic plague outbreak area in Hong Kong in 1894.
I try to summarize some of these thoughts in a rambling fashion on the podcast (episode from Mar 15, featuring journalist Joshua Hammer), but better yet, order a copy of the book for yourself here. Coincidentally, right after recording the podcast Para/site announced that they’re donating 50% of book sales to COVID-related charities in HK (and if you’re a bookseller interested in taking part in this charitable effort, please contact the gallery)
The Quarantine Canon
Like many people, I’ve been thinking a lot about the books/films of the “quarantine canon”, and more generally, works about isolation, restricted movement, self-contained communities, etc, as those are some of my favorite genres. I want to keep expanding the list, especially to works that are more obscure or overlooked, so I reached out to experts Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley for a recommendation. They previously curated the exhibition “Landscapes of Quarantine” in 2011, and are currently writing a book about the history and future of quarantine for MCD Books (due out spring 2021; which is so far away!). The dynamic duo kindly shared this tip:
It's tough to say what books are overlooked - so many, particularly in the last few weeks, have gotten their moment of sunlight, from STATION ELEVEN to THE STAND to, of course, the film CONTAGION. The outbreak canon - Camus, Defoe, Poe - is already so strong. A book I'd recommend with broad, meta-relevance to the general idea of quarantine is Daniel Jütte's excellent THE STRAIT GATE, on the political, symbolic, psychological, and ritual role of doors in Western culture. Thresholds, inside/outside, keeping things at bay. It's definitely under-read and it deserves more exposure.
Some other things that are keeping me sane
-- This inspiring thread by Francis Tseng, “things we allegedly can’t have but we can”. Worth going through the whole thing and following as it grows.
-- Desert Oracle, the quarterly zine and podcast and radio show charting the myths and landscape of the Mojave Desert - I wrote a little appreciation of it here on the Inside Voices blog, and listen to it here (best on the car stereo driving on a moonlit highway between mesas, but also fine in your bedroom)
-- Spending time in the glorious backlog of NTS Radio - for some always on-point vintage jazz mixes out of Tokyo, check Chee Shimizu’s Organic Music
-- Glimpses of the wider world - not just outside your door, but under the sea, as in, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s #Jellyfishcam. The aquarium is closed, but the jellyfish are now telecommuting to *you*.
The website says: “Watch our sea nettles as their long tentacles and lacey mouth-arms move smoothly through the water.”
You don’t have to tell me twice.
Distantly, but with you,
shc
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Hello, I’m Samantha Culp, a writer, producer, and strategist based in Los Angeles after many years in greater China. You’re receiving this because you signed up via my website, or an event, or perhaps we even know each other from the offline world (wild!). Feel free to unsubscribe at any time by clicking here.
Note on the title: much of my work (and perhaps entire adult life) seems to be about exploring peripheries, faultlines, liminal spaces, hybrid phenomena. The edges, the overlaps, the places where things bleed together. The “Border Studies” newsletter includes things that I have been working on and thinking about, alongside selected artefacts worth reading, hearing, watching.
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