Paper short abstract:

What would a future where the physical and virtual realms collapse into each other look like? This paper proposes to look at image hybridization as a way of speculating on the long-term changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in our perception and sensorial experience of space.

Paper long abstract:

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, matters of geography have become increasingly relevant. New viral borders, the reterritorialization of the majority of work and leisure activities into the virtual realm, the constant onslaught of images, numbers, and maps -all these elements continue to reshape how we move through and think about space. But what will the long-term effects of this crisis be on how we view the world and our place in it?

Combining Doreen Massey's work on the plurality of space with Derrida's hauntological approach and Lev Manovich's concept of augmented space, this paper looks at how film and image hybridization can be used to portray possible futures as glimpsed from this particular point in time - futures of digital sensibilities in which the past-present, official and unofficial, near and far hierarchies are overturned in a cyber-reality ruled by algorithms of desire, interest, and commercial appeal.

Using two of my most recent projects on the topic of the pandemic as examples, I wish to explore the idea that the overlapping/merging of archival images, observational footage and filmed performative actions can not only allow us to record events in ways which speak of the simultaneity, ongoingness and confusion of the present as we experience it, but also speculate on how these events will alter our perception of reality in the future.