Reserved for Social Distancing
Channel: Natalia Stanusch
Date: 2020-07-16

Reserved for Social Distancing is a semi-autoethnographic project, lasting less than seven minutes. The film focuses on the state-of-mind during social distancing, embracing lockdown aesthetics in an indefinite Coronavirus-caused exile. The film explores the feelings of longing for being outside during isolation: isolation inside one’s room, one’s mind, and one’s digital dependence. The ‘outside,’ however, is represented both by the world outside the window and the world inside the computer screen. The physical space fuses into the digital realm where social interactions can occur. The character goes through a series of fluctuations, from the physical space, through one’s mind, to the digital space. The film explores the anxiety related to quarantine and the fear of breaking free from a seemingly safe, closed, and digital space and the fear of ‘after lockdown’ world. In the glass mediated reality, where both a window and a computer screen provide an escape to something as unreal as the past, the voiceover gives a glimpse of feelings and thoughts of the character, who is mediated through a smartphone camera.

The film is a part of "Affect & Social Media#4.5 and The Sensorium Art Show 'Media Virality and the Lockdown Aesthetic'" conference and is showcased in the panel titled 'Lockdown Aesthetic & Quarantine Blues,' https://viralcontagion.blog/asm4-5/