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Paper short abstract:

Covid Collage Chronicles is a visual anthropology 'ars-combinatoria' chronicle and diary of the Covid 19 pandemic consisting of 350 collages. I argue that such border aesthetic and undercommons practices fuel radical collaboration and imaginative ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

Maximiliano Gioni suggests 'Collage is a dirty medium, infected as it is by waste. It appropriates residues and leftovers, trafficking with what is deemed valueless...for collage feeds off the pollution of visual culture'. Collage does appear as an 'art of crisis that has entertained a deep relationship with trauma and violence. There is something...guttural and visceral that immediately connects it with rupture and intervention....Collage has resurfaced at this 'time of collective panic and social change'(2007).

This paper draws on maps notions from Mieke Bal's 'migratory aesthetics'(2011); 'imaginative ethnography' as put forward by Pandian (2019), Loveless (2019), Elliott and Culhane, (2017), Taussig, (2011, 2021); attention economy (Doran, 2017); artistic citizenship and the commons / undercommons (Elliott et al, 2017, Stefano and Moten 2013); and 'border aesthetics' (Sandro and Nielson, 2013, Mignolo, 2000, Sholette, 2017). I point to my and others' use of appropriation, disjunction and juxtaposition as resistance tactics, using my project Covid Collage Chronicles. It is a visual anthropology 'ars-combinatoria' chronicle and diary of the Covid 19 pandemic. It consists of 350 images made using collage on ten inch square cake cards. They cover aspects of communication, culture, economy, environment, health, people, politics, protest, and spirit, and personal territory.