Content Warning & Trigger Warning
This project researches and circles around COVID-19. The content displayed interacts with the current pandemic. Please be advised that the following content might inflict distress and anxiety.
I will forever be ungrateful for Corona, it has robbed us of our lives, our loved ones and many more things, but it also has provided us with opportunities. If not for Corona I probably would still be in China, would most likely not study at the University of St Andrews and would have probably not spent that much time with my family. I think that I have adapted fairly well to the current pandemic and have learned to cherish these moments it has enabled. Yet I see room for improvement, especially on the national and international level. This video project is a critique for the approach in the trinational region of France, Germany & Switzerland.
Background and Inspiration for my video project
My parents’ home is in Basle, Switzerland. Basle itself lies in close proximity to France and Germany. I believe this is a unique geopolitical character which cannot be found all too often around the world – a close knit trinational community. And during this current pandemic I have all too often observed the different approaches these three nations have chosen to follow & execute. Especially in the “close-to-the-border-area” in which Basle lies, I found it rather silly that those three nations had different approaches since they are so interconnected. French and German workers travel to Basle by thousands daily and the Swiss go shopping in Germany and France, the economies are reliant on one another, yet the pandemic responses differ. I do understand that the central governments of these nations decide on their concepts but COVID-19 does not know borders. If we would not have borders, a hypothetical game similar to the thought of a non-colonialized Africa, perhaps a more viable stance against the pandemic might emerge (M’charek, 2020). What is the point of France closing the shops and restaurants ensuring a nightly curfew, when the restaurants and stores in Switzerland are open and the French population near the border now comes to Switzerland for said two activities/ options. I tried to illustrate this dilemma by driving through Switzerland, France and Germany. Unfortunately, during the filming period, I was not able to enter Germany since I did not have a working permit nor a PCR test to show. Nevertheless I managed to film a small border crossing between the two nations.
Methodology
I chose to record my movement and the movement of the population of the tri-national region from the safe space of my car. I utilized my phone as a dashcam to collect the motions of what was happening from my point of view (p.o.v.). I purposely chose an intimate p.o.v. trying to convey that they viewer himself was in the video, seeing what I was seeing, and seeing more than I was seeing (more on that later on). This p.o.v. method was chosen in adaption to the Jawsploitation mentioned in (Hunter, 2019). I also chose to use my car instead of my bike to cover more ground. The “base film”, the video of me recording the area, illustrates the inter-connection of the three nations and reflects how reliant those nations are on one another. A base film because without it the other overlaid video would not have the same impact. And a base film because it enables the viewer to be part of the “bas-”ic interaction of the region.
For the overlaid video file, I have specifically chosen a simple, youthful method which I deem rather appropriate for this Corona-centric project. I chose a method I first used in kindergarten and never have used since. Dissolved watercolor and painted/ spread by a straw fueled/ transported by my own lungs. This associates perfectly with the spread of the Coronavirus and the aerosols through the air (Ningthoujam, 2020). With me blowing the watercolor over the map of the trinational region I simulate the spread or the hypothetical spread of the virus. I used the color red to showcase the German variant, and blue for the French variant. Combining these colors, violet is the outcome. The virus knows no border, why should we? Why should we have different approaches to deal with the virus when we transmit it throughout the region? The movement of individuals enables the “free” movement of the virus, abolishing the borders and unfollowing the centralized approaches of the different governments, and allows for a holistic and mutual approach against the virus (Edmond, 2021).
Viewing Aid
Ideally the video should be watched in a loop indefinitely.
The video itself should be viewed in three separate stages as it purposely loops/ repeats itself three times. The initial sequence displays the commute within the three nations, without any further addition or effects. The thereafter following sequence adds a first insert of the virus, the French/ blue and German/ red variant. The last sequence exhibits the spread of the different and combined variants, the purple stage in the three regions. Additionally the gravity of the spread was highlighted by slowly decreasing the transparency of the virus from nonexistent in the first loop to fully covering the center of the screen in the last sequence. This should amplify the seriousness of the matter. Furthermore the viewer of the video manages to see more than we normally do through our naked eye. The viewer now has the ability to realize the spread of the virus within this project. This project all in all is a critique to the current system of states not working together. This pandemic can only be tackled by working together, nationalistic or selfish sentiment make us suffer longer.
German Variant
French Variant
Violet Variant
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Works Cited
Edmond, L. (2021, March 16). Post-pandemic society should abolish borders. Retrieved April 2021, from The Manitoban: http://www.themanitoban.com/2021/03/post-pandemic-society-should-abolish-borders/41819/
Hunter, I. Q. (2019). Exploitation as Adaptation. In I. R. Smith, Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation (p. 20). Leicester: De Montfort University.
M’charek, A. (2020, April 6). Harraga: Burning borders, navigating colonialism. The Sociologiacl Review, 68(2), 418-434 .
Ningthoujam, R. (2020, May-June). “COVID 19 can spread through breathing, talking, study estimates. Current medicine research and practice, 10(3), 132-133.