Paper short abstract:

The first case of COVID-19 was reported in New Zealand in February 2020, with a Level-4 lockdown implemented on the 28 March 2020. Easter and ANZAC day both fell within this time of social distancing. During the lockdown I documented the distanced sociality.

Paper long abstract:

The first case of COVID-19 was reported in New Zealand on 28 February 2020, with a Level-4 lockdown implemented on the 28 March 2020. I, like others, was restricted to ‘social distancing’. While people, for the most part adhered to physical distancing, communities were finding ways to engage in acts of reciprocity through anonymous non-contact “gifts”: stuffed toys (mainly bears) in windows, chalk messages and hop scotch on pavements, and painted stones and laminated slogans tied to trees and shrubs in local shrubs and bushes. This was especially apparent during the time when ANZAC Day and Easter are celebrated with community. I argue that these messages are intended as visual community “gifts,” a way for members of the community to contribute to sociality as well as show that they are doing their part to “flatten the curve” and act as responsible members of the community.

If, following Turner, we are currently in a liminal stage, I wonder what social stage we are moving into, and if these self-perpetuating gifts will continue to lead us into different configurations of community, of self-actualisation and responsibility to a more holistically global sense of the world as interconnected through visual representation.